People from Japan
18 profiles
Technology
Yukihiro Matsumoto
Japanese programmer who created the Ruby programming language
Born 1965
Technology
Kazuo Inamori
Founder of Kyocera and KDDI who rescued Japan Airlines
1932 – 2022
Technology
Shigeru Miyamoto
Nintendo designer who created Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong
Born 1952
Science
Isamu Akasaki
Japanese scientist who made the first gallium-nitride blue LED
1929 – 2021
Hiroshi Yamauchi
Nintendo president who turned a playing-card firm into a video-game giant
1927 – 2013
Technology
Kōnosuke Matsushita
Founder of Panasonic, Japan’s “god of management”
1894 – 1989
Technology
Ken Kutaragi
Sony engineer known as the father of the PlayStation
Born 1950
Technology
Yuji Naka
Programmer who co-created Sonic the Hedgehog at Sega
Born 1965
Technology
Satoru Iwata
Programmer turned Nintendo president who launched the DS and Wii
1959 – 2015
Technology
Masayoshi Son
Founder of SoftBank and the Vision Fund
Born 1957
Technology
Masatoshi Shima
Japanese engineer who co-designed the Intel 4004, the first microprocessor
Born 1943
Technology
Masaru Ibuka
Engineer who co-founded Sony and drove its innovations
1908 – 1997
Technology
Hiroshi Mikitani
Founder and CEO of Rakuten, Japan’s e-commerce giant
Born 1965
Science
Hiroshi Ishiguro
Japanese roboticist who builds lifelike androids, including a copy of himself
Born 1963
Science
Hiroshi Amano
Japanese physicist who co-created the blue LED as a graduate student
Born 1960
Film & TV
Hideo Kojima
Japanese game creator of Metal Gear and Death Stranding
Born 1963
Gunpei Yokoi
Nintendo inventor of the Game Boy and Game & Watch
1941 – 1997
Technology
Akio Morita
Co-founder of Sony who launched the Walkman
1921 – 1999