Yusaku Maezawa's $350 Million Superyacht Nausicaä Spotted Sailing Off Hawaii
A 375-foot superyacht cruising in Hawaiian waters near Molokai and Oahu in August 2026 stirred enough public curiosity that some onlookers mistook it for a military vessel. Multiple boating websites identified the vessel as Nausicaä, owned by Japanese entrepreneur and art collector Yusaku Maezawa, founder of the fashion retailer Zozotown (Hawaii News Now).
The yacht, reportedly costing US$350 million, was designed by Marc Newson and built by the German shipyard Lürssen. Boat International confirmed the vessel — measuring approximately 114 metres, or about 375 feet — was officially delivered to Maezawa in June 2026 (Boat International, Facebook). Its name nods to Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the 1984 animated film by Studio Ghibli, the celebrated Japanese animation studio.
Onboard, Nausicaä holds nine cabins, a sushi bar, a helipad, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and a two-story art gallery. According to the New York Post, that gallery displays works from Maezawa's collection, including pieces by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, and Christopher Wool (Artnet; New York Post).
Maezawa's buying habits at auction are well documented. Over two days in 2016, he spent US$98 million across seven works at Christie's and Sotheby's, including Koons's Lobster (2007), Alexander Calder's Sumac 17 (1955), and Bruce Nauman's Eat War (1986). The following year, he paid US$110.5 million at Sotheby's for an untitled 1982 Jean-Michel Basquiat painting of a skull on a blue background — at the time, a record price for the artist.
That Basquiat has had an eventful life on the water. Maezawa's children once threw cornflakes at the painting while it hung on one of his yachts, and crew members attempting to wipe them off made the damage worse. Art historian and conservator Pandora Mather-Lees was brought in to help restore the work (The Guardian). Before any of that, the painting had gone on public view at the Brooklyn Museum in 2018. Maezawa later sold it to the American billionaire Ken Griffin for US$200 million, as reported by Artnet columnist Kenny Schachter.
Maezawa has also looked beyond the ocean. He planned to send himself into space, and separately organised a project — dubbed dearMoon — to take a group of artists on a lunar flyby. That plan captured attention across the art and space worlds before being called off.
For now, though, the spectacle is floating off Hawaii. A vessel large enough to be mistaken for a navy ship, named after a Studio Ghibli princess, carrying a private gallery of postwar and contemporary art through the Pacific — it is, by any measure, a lot of boat.
