List of Famous people named Tanaka

Tanaka Shōsuke was an important Japanese technician and trader in metals from Kyoto during the beginning of the 17th century.

Tanaka Shinbei was one of the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu, elite samurai, active in Japan during the late Tokugawa shogunate in the 1860s.

Tanaka Hisashige was a Japanese rangaku scholar, engineer and inventor during the Bakumatsu and early Meiji period in Japan. In 1875, he founded what became the Toshiba Corporation. He has been called the "Thomas Edison of Japan" or "Karakuri Giemon."

Raizō Tanaka was a rear admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during most of World War II. A specialist in the heavy torpedoes that were carried by all the destroyers and cruisers of the IJN, Tanaka mainly commanded destroyer squadrons, with a cruiser or two attached, and he was the primary leader of the "Tokyo Express" reinforcement and resupply shipments during the long campaign for the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific Ocean. From the Americans, Tanaka acquired the nickname of "Tenacious Tanaka" for his stalwart opposition.

Tanaka Isson was the pseudonym of a Japanese Nihonga painter from the Shōwa period noted for his flower-and-bird paintings of the Amami Islands. His real name was Tanaka Jun.

Baron Tanaka Giichi was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army, politician, cabinet minister, and the Prime Minister of Japan from 1927 to 1929.