List of Famous people born in Japan

Ayane Kurihara is a Japanese badminton player. She began playing badminton at age 9, and played competitively from then on. She became a member of the Japan national badminton team at the age of 19. Her current partner is Naru Shinoya for women's doubles and Kohei Gondo for mixed doubles. Kurihara competed with her former partner Kenta Kazuno in the mixed doubles at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Masaki Satō is a Japanese pop singer. She is a former tenth-generation member of the pop group Morning Musume.

Toshihide Maskawa is a Japanese theoretical physicist known for his work on CP-violation who was awarded one quarter of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature."

Kana Asumi is a Japanese actress, voice actress, singer and a former member of the girl group Lisp.

Misuzu Kaneko was a Japanese poet, known for her poetry for children. She was born Teru Kaneko in the fishing village of Senzaki, now part of Nagato, Yamaguchi prefecture. Motifs of fishing and the sea often make appearances in her poems. Celebrated during her lifetime, her works fell into obscurity after her death, until being rediscovered in the 1980s. Since then, she has been regarded as one of Japan's most beloved children's poets.

Sakura Noshitani is a Japanese female rhythmic gymnast.

Motoko Obayashi is a volleyball player from Japan, who competed at the 1996 Summer Olympics. She competed in three consecutive Summer Olympics, starting in 1988. She was considered the most valuable player at the Barcelona Games. She released a single under the solo project named Deka Moni in 2001. Since her retirement from professional volleyball she has been working as an actress, predominantly appearing in stage plays.

Ten Miyagi is a Japanese footballer currently playing as a forward for Kawasaki Frontale. He was born to a Burmese father and Japanese mother.

Kazuyoshi Funaki is a Japanese ski jumper. He ranked among the most successful sportsmen of its discipline, particularly in the 1990s. Funaki is known for his special variant of the V-style, in which the body lies flatter between the skis than usual.

Masahide Uehara , mainly known by his pseudonym Alice Arisugawa , is a Japanese mystery writer. He is one of the representative writers of the new traditionalist movement in Japanese mystery writing and was the first president of the Honkaku Mystery Writers Club of Japan from 2000 to 2005. He has also served as part of the selection committee for various literary awards, most notably the Ayukawa Tetsuya Award from 1996 to 1999 and Edogawa Rampo Prize from 2014 to 2017.