Miyamoto Becomes First Game Creator to Receive Japan’s Cultural Medal
Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced on October 23 the recipients of the Order of Culture for the current fiscal year, and Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was named among them. It marks the first time since the award was established in 1937 that someone from the video game industry has been honored. The recognition places the creator behind Super Mario alongside some of Japan’s most celebrated cultural and sporting figures.
The Order of Culture is granted to individuals who have made especially outstanding contributions to the development of culture. Past recipients include Japanese painting master Yokoyama Taikan, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Yukawa Hideki, baseball legend Sadaharu Oh and the late Shigeo Nagashima, a list widely regarded as Japan’s highest honor across culture and sport. Miyamoto’s inclusion makes him the first game industry figure in the award’s nearly nine-decade history.
The day before receiving the honor, Miyamoto held a press conference at Nintendo’s headquarters in Kyoto. Smiling, he said the award left him feeling “very embarrassed,” and stressed that “games are not made by one person — I accept this honor as one member representing the entire development team.” He also touched on recent cross-industry efforts, including Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios, the company’s film business and the Pikmin mobile game made with Scopely, saying he hopes to share the joy with people in more fields.
Looking back on 50 years in games, Miyamoto recalled how the simplified controllers of Wii and DS brought games into the living room. “There used to be a wall between people who could play games and people who couldn’t,” he said, adding that today “three generations know what a game is” and that games becoming part of culture shows they have become part of daily life. Asked about Super Mario’s greatest invention, he answered unexpectedly: “Mario doesn’t fight Bowser — that’s the biggest invention.” He added that he hopes games will one day be evaluated not as games but as a culture of “computer interaction.” For an industry that has long sought exactly that kind of recognition, this medal is a meaningful step. 🏅
