Kota Engaku

Rock star style

Organised chaos

Good to go

Setting trends

Deep in Tokyo, among the rivers of traffic and noodling side streets, Kota Engaku flicks a cigarette butt to the ground and shoves open the door to his ground-floor office. We follow him into what looks like a ransacked museum.

Paperwork spreads across desks, covering pens and ashtrays. Magazines are piled in teetering columns; even more are crammed onto sagging shelves. Old numberplates and garage signs line the walls. Suspended from the ceiling: a ship’s wheel, a trombone, and a vintage bicycle – one of those with two little springs under the saddle. A model Cessna aeroplane nosedives toward the concrete floor. Cardboard boxes are stacked high, creating makeshift alleyways. Three homemade motorcycles huddle in a corner.

Kota sparks up another smoke and pushes his bleached blond hair behind purple-tinted glasses. With his wet-look leather trousers, tan desert boots, frayed denim jacket and two slim silver chains over a torn white t-shirt, Kota’s vibe is somewhere between mid-tour rockstar and backstreet mechanic.

He pulls out one of the bikes, unscrews the fuel cap, peers in and shrugs. Empty. Digging into a leather saddlebag he produces a length of clear tubing, dips it into another bike’s tank, and siphons – wetting his lips with petrol. Another drag on his cigarette and we’re good to go.

At first, Kota’s world doesn’t seem very Bentley. But spend time with him, and the magnolia Arnage parked around the corner starts to make sense.

He’s been in publishing for 25 years. He edits the Japanese edition of Kinfolk – the influential art and design title – alongside four custom bike magazines, including one dedicated to choppers and another, Weller, devoted to classic mod-style scooters (if you know, you know). But editing, for Kota, is more than a job. It’s a way of moving through life. A tastemaker, not a follower, Kota doesn’t consume trends. He shapes them.

“I’m definitely conscious of creating a worldview – something that doesn’t exist elsewhere,” he says. “Through media, I want to express that view and connect with people who feel an affinity with it. That’s how I put things out into the world.”

And a big part of that view, aside from the choppers and scooters, is cars.

“I’ve loved cars since I was quite young – I get it from my father,” he says. “I dreamed of driving a car I love in the streets of Tokyo. That dream has always been there.” It’s also come true. Kota’s garage includes a classic Porsche 356 and a couple of Bentleys. At one point he had four: a Mulsanne, an Arnage R, an Arnage T, and an early Bentley Continental GT.

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Kota driving his Bentley Arnage through a tunnel.

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Obsessed by Bentley

Late-night revelation

Tailored to the driver

Making (and breaking) the rules

“When I first entered publishing, I worked for Car magazine in Japan,” he explains. “We would borrow cars from PR departments to write about. I was still in my early 20s then. Because of insurance coverage, Bentley Japan had a rule that only editors aged 30 or older could drive the cars. But I’d researched the car, I knew everything about it and wanted to drive it so badly. Late at night, after everyone had left the office, I secretly took the key – I really was not supposed to – and drove it. It felt incredible. That 6.75-litre V8! That memory is very vivid. And it’s why I have an Arnage now.”

This was the era of the infamous Mid Night Club. An underground street racing scene, it saw the city’s expressways commandeered after dark by some of the fastest cars in the world, tuned to Godzilla-like levels of power (a top speed of 160mph was the minimum entry requirement…). In a world before the internet, meeting details would be smuggled into newspaper ads using secret codes only club members could understand. It was thrilling, dangerous and utterly addictive. And while the scene was dominated by homegrown ‘JDM’ Skylines, Supras and RX-7s, European exotics had their place too.

“I came to really like Bentley when I began exploring the historic models – the coachbuilt cars with bodies by British companies like Hooper and H.J. Mulliner,” he says. “I thought that the coachbuilding approach was similar to custom motorcycle culture, and the more I looked into it, the more I loved it.”

Suddenly the apparent mismatch of a super-lux Bentley beside a stripped-back chopper doesn’t seem so odd.

“When it comes to bikes, rather than simply riding something exactly as a manufacturer released it, I want to add my own thinking and my own tastes, my own materials,” says Kota. “In the end, that leads me to custom bikes.”

In other words, like bespoke bikes, Bentley gives you that feeling of something hand-made, with the sense it’s been created just for you. Often literally, with Bentley’s endless customisation options and extras. “Bentley has long had that made-to-order approach,” says Kota, “even in the old world of racing, like Le Mans, where cars were tailored to the tastes of the drivers.”

Kota wheels the motorcycle – a naked, Mad Max-style Harley – outside so we can grab some shots. He pumps the kickstart several times until it snarls and spits into life. Telescopic chrome forks stretch from the bars to the skinny front wheel, well over a metre away. There’s no front brake and just a drum brake at the rear, a mere suggestion of safety. Kota fastens the chinstrap of a red, scuffed, open-face helmet, drops into the saddle and tears off into traffic – swishing left and right as our camera team scramble to keep up. Here’s a man who doesn’t worry too much about the rules.

Shots complete, it’s a short walk to Kota’s other ride – an Arnage R, one of the last off the line. Inside, it’s a different world to his office. Not a biscuit crumb or spillage in sight. The thick carpets have been freshly vacuumed, stripe marks from the brush head still visible, like a neatly mowed lawn. And while the upholstery is various shades of tobacco, it’s never been smoked in. It’s one rule for the office, another for the Arnage…

View out throught the front windscreen of Kota driving his Bentley Arnage.

Close up of the interior of Kota's Bentley Arnage.

Feeling the Bentley connection

Driving into the twilight

Enduring spirit

Space to create

We set off into Tokyo’s mad spider’s web of streets. Kota threads the Arnage through lanes more suited to baby Kei cars and around sharp, hilly hairpins with practised ease – like skating a longboard through a slalom. “Tokyo has many narrow roads,” he says, “but I’m used to driving big cars, so it’s no problem to drive around here. It’s just so comfortable to be in.” The van driver forced to reverse the length of a street to let us pass may have other thoughts.

Moody clouds are settling over the city, uplit by the tungsten glow of a million streetlights. It’s rush hour, and traffic flows like magma looking for a way out. Roads crisscross on multiple levels, skyscrapers shoot up from every block. Tokyo’s neon blurs through the raindrops on the windscreen, before the wipers swish to reveal the hi-res scene again. It feels like we’ve slipped into the twilight zone – jetlag in a strange city will do that to you.

In all of this, Bentley’s HQ in the north of England feels a million miles away. But, running his hands around the steering wheel and over the dashboard, Kota feels the connection.

“When I sit here and look at the materials, I wonder what kind of people made this, and how,” he says. “With everything you touch, there’s a strong sense that human hands were involved. That really appeals to me. Moments like this make me think, ‘Yes, this is a Bentley’.”

It’s a weirdly haunting thought… as if the ghosts of Bentley’s past live on in every car, their spirit imbued in the leather, the stitching, the woodgrain. Or ready to spring from the glovebox when you idly open it to see what’s there. Maybe it’s the jetlag talking again. It’s been a long day.

We drive deeper into the city, toward Shibuya where Kota was born and raised. The area is famous for its scramble crossing, where streams of pedestrians and traffic take turns to surge across the intersection in choreographed chaos. Replica Mario Karts buzz through the mix, their drivers dressed as Nintendo characters, weaving between taxis and tourists.

“Tokyo is a very real city,” he says. “Many different people live here, and it’s constantly evolving. People are expected to change along with it. It feels like being inside a living organism – and surviving in it is quite difficult.”

Yet here, in the Arnage, there is stillness. Room to think. To breathe.

“I think a Bentley really suits Tokyo. It provides moments of calm and space to be creative. It’s not just a tool,” he reflects, almost to himself. “It really feels like a beloved item.”

It’s getting late, and Kota has places to be. So we say our goodbyes and exit the Arnage into a riptide of people. Kota pulls away, the Arnage’s cream paintwork strobing under the fluorescence of the Tokyo night. An outsider, maybe, but with nothing lost in translation.