33 Japanese video game directors

Eiji Aonuma is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. He works for Nintendo as the project manager of their The Legend of Zelda series. Aonuma is also one of the deputy general managers of Nintendo's Entertainment Planning & Development division, having served that role since 2019.

Katsuya Eguchi is a Japanese game designer, director and producer, most known for being a creator of the Animal Crossing series.

Katsuhiro Harada is a Japanese game producer, director, and general manager from Bandai Namco Entertainment, best known as a producer and director of the popular fighting game series Tekken.

Akihiro Hino is a Japanese video game designer and businessman. Starting his career as a programmer in the 1990s, he later took on roles in writing, design, directing and producing. He founded Level-5 in 1998, where he remains its president and CEO.

Yuji Horii is a Japanese video game designer and scenario writer best known as the creator of the Dragon Quest series of role-playing games, supervising and writing the scenario for Chrono Trigger, as well as the first visual novel adventure game Portopia Serial Murder Case.

Shigesato Itoi is a Japanese copywriter, essayist, lyricist, game designer, and actor. Itoi is the editor-in-chief of his website and company Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun. He is best known outside Japan for his work on Nintendo's Mother/EarthBound series of games, as well as his self-titled bass fishing video game.

Satoru Iwata was a Japanese businessman, video game programmer, video game designer, and producer. He was the fourth president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Nintendo. He was a major contributor in broadening the appeal of video games by focusing on novel and entertaining games rather than top-of-the-line hardware.

Yoshinori Kitase is a Japanese game director and producer working for Square Enix. He is known as the director of Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X, and the producer of the Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII series. Kitase is a vice president, a member of the board of directors and an executive officer at Square Enix. He is currently the head of Square Enix's Creative Business Unit I and the Final Fantasy series Brand Manager. He was the head of Square Enix's Business Division 1 during its entire existence as well as a Corporate Executive. He is also part of the Final Fantasy Committee that is tasked with keeping the franchise's releases and content consistent.

Hideo Kojima is a Japanese video game designer, director, producer, and writer.

Hideki Konno is a video game director, game designer and producer who works for Nintendo. Since 2015, Konno works as manager at Nintendo EPD, more precisely on the Smart Device Group, the department responsible for production of smartphone games.

Junichi Masuda is a Japanese video game composer, director, designer, producer, singer, programmer and trombonist, best known for his work in the Pokémon franchise. He is a member of the Game Freak board of directors, and has been employed at the company since 1989 when he founded it alongside Satoshi Tajiri and Ken Sugimori.

Hiroshi Matsuyama , born in 1970 in Fukuoka, is a Japanese game designer. He is the CEO of the company CyberConnect2. He developed multiple games including the .hack franchise as well as adaptations of the anime series including Naruto and Dragon Ball. Besides developing games, Matsuyama has participated in directing two .hack films as well as voicing a character from the series.

Shinji Mikami is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. Starting his career at Capcom in 1990, he went on to direct many of the company's biggest titles. He directed the first installment of the Resident Evil series in 1996 and the first installment of the Dino Crisis series in 1999, both being survival horror games. He returned to Resident Evil to direct the remake of the first game in 2002 and the third-person shooter Resident Evil 4 in 2005. In 2006, he directed his final Capcom game God Hand, a beat 'em up action game. Mikami worked at PlatinumGames to direct the third-person shooter Vanquish in 2010. The same year, he founded his own studio Tango Gameworks which has since been acquired by the American company ZeniMax Media. Under his studio, he directed the third-person horror game The Evil Within in 2014. He has also served the roles of producer and executive producer for many games.

Hiroshi Minagawa , also known by the nickname Nigoro, is a Japanese video game artist, designer and director.

Shigeru Miyamoto is a Japanese video game designer, producer and game director at Nintendo, where he serves as one of its representative directors. He is the creator of some of the most acclaimed and best-selling game franchises of all time, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Star Fox and Pikmin. He is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and influential designers in the history of video games.

Yuji Naka is a Japanese video game programmer, designer, and producer who was the former head of Sega's Sonic Team, where he was the lead programmer of the original Sonic the Hedgehog series of games on the Sega Mega Drive. With Sega, Naka also led development on games including Nights into Dreams (1996), Burning Rangers (1998), Sonic Adventure (1998), and three games in the Phantasy Star franchise (1987-2000). In 2006, he left Sega to found Prope, an independent game company. Naka also worked under Square Enix to direct Balan Wonderworld (2021).

Naoto Ohshima is a Japanese artist and video game designer best known for designing the Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Eggman characters from Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Although Yuji Naka created the original tech demo around which Sonic's gameplay was based, the character in his prototype was a ball that lacked any specific features. Sonic Team considered numerous potential animal mascots before deciding on Ohshima's design, with an armadillo or hedgehog being the top choices because their spikes worked well with the concept of rolling into enemies.

Kouji "Cozy" Okada is a Japanese video game producer and director. Beginning his career in the early 1980s with stints at Universal Technos and Tecmo, Okada went on to become one of the founders of Atlus in 1986, as well as co-creating the Megami Tensei and Persona series of role-playing games. After leaving Atlus in 2003, Okada formed the studio Gaia, which he led until its dissolution in 2010.

Hironobu Sakaguchi is a Japanese game designer, director, producer and writer. Originally working for Square from 1983 to 2003, he departed the company and founded independent studio Mistwalker in 2004. He is known as the creator of the Final Fantasy franchise, in addition to other titles during his time at Square. At Mistwalker, he is known for creating the Blue Dragon and Terra Battle series among several standalone titles, moving away from home consoles and creating titles for mobile platforms.

Yoshio Sakamoto is a Japanese video game designer, director, and producer. He has worked at Nintendo since 1982. He has directed several games in the Metroid series. He is one of the most prominent members of Nintendo's former Research and Development 1 division, along with Gunpei Yokoi and Toru Osawa.

Masahiro Sakurai is a Japanese video game director, game designer and songwriter best known as the creator of the Kirby and Super Smash Bros. series. Apart from his work on those series, he also led the design of Meteos in 2005 and directed Kid Icarus: Uprising in 2012.

Goichi Suda , known by his alias Suda51, is a Japanese video game designer, writer and director. Affiliated with Human Entertainment from 1994 to 1998, he founded Grasshopper Manufacture in 1998 with a number of other Human Entertainment staff to produce their own titles. His best-known work has come from Grasshopper Manufacture, including The Silver Case (1999), Killer7 (2005), and the No More Heroes series.

Hidetaka Suehiro , known as SWERY or Swery65, is a Japanese video game director and writer. He was one of the founding members of the game development studio Access Games which is based in Osaka. His roles in the company included director, designer, and writer. He is the director of the games Spy Fiction, Deadly Premonition and D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die. He then left the company in 2016, and he founded a new studio, named White Owls Inc.

Yu Suzuki is a Japanese game designer, producer, programmer, and engineer, who headed Sega's AM2 team for 18 years. Considered one of the first auteurs of video games, he has been responsible for a number of Sega's arcade hits, including three-dimensional sprite-scaling games that used "taikan" motion simulator arcade cabinets, such as Hang-On, Space Harrier, Out Run, and After Burner, and pioneering polygonal 3D games such as Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which are credited with popularizing 3D graphics in video games, as well as the critically acclaimed Shenmue series. As a hardware engineer, he led the development of various arcade system boards, including the Sega Space Harrier, Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3, and was involved in the technical development of the Dreamcast console and its corresponding NAOMI arcade hardware.

Hajime Tabata is a Japanese game director, the previous Luminous Productions COO and Head of Studio who formerly worked for Square Enix and currently the CEO of JP Games.

Shu Takumi is a Japanese video game designer, director, and writer at Capcom. He is best known for his work on the Ace Attorney series, serving as director and scenario writer for the original trilogy. In addition, he provided the Japanese voice of Phoenix Wright for the first four games. He then served as director and scenario writer for Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective in 2010.

Kensuke Tanabe is a Japanese video game designer, producer and director working for Nintendo, where he currently is Senior Officer at Nintendo EPD.

Takashi Tezuka is a Japanese video game designer, director and producer. He is a senior officer of Nintendo EPD and executive at Nintendo.

Motomu Toriyama is a Japanese game director and scenario writer who has been working for Square Enix since 1994. He initially worked on cutscenes in Bahamut Lagoon and Final Fantasy VII before serving as one of the 3 directors on Final Fantasy X under Yoshinori Kitase where he was incharge of events.

Keiichirō Toyama is a Japanese video game director and designer, best known as the creator of the Silent Hill, Siren and Gravity Rush franchises.

Kotaro Uchikoshi is a Japanese video game director and writer. He is known for his work on visual novel games, including the Infinity and Zero Escape series. His writing style often incorporates elements of science fiction with various scientific and philosophical themes, and makes heavy use of plot twists.

Fumito Ueda is a Japanese video game designer. Ueda is best known as the director and lead designer of Ico (2001) and Shadow of the Colossus (2005) while leading Team Ico at Japan Studio, and The Last Guardian (2016) through his own development company GenDesign. His games have achieved cult status and are distinguished by their usage of minimal plot and scenario using fictional languages, and use of overexposed, desaturated light. He has been described by some as an auteur of video games.

Yoko Taro is a Japanese video game director and scenario writer. Starting his career at the now-defunct game company Cavia, his best-known work was on the action role-playing video game series Drakengard, and its spin-offs, Nier and Nier: Automata. Yoko was born in Nagoya, Aichi, and studied at the Kobe Design University in the 1990s. While he did not initially intend to pursue a career in video games, after working at Namco and Sony, he joined Cavia and became the director and scenario writer for the first Drakengard game. He has since worked extensively on every game in the series, and on mobile titles, after becoming a freelancer after Cavia's absorption into AQ Interactive.