Hideo Kojima awarded Japan's highest cultural prize

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The second game developer to receive the Japanese Minister's Award for Fine Arts.

Hideo Kojima
(Image credit: The Game Awards)

Hideo Kojima was today awarded the annual Japanese Minister's Award for Fine Arts, in the Media Arts category: one of the country's most prestigious cultural gongs. The prize goes to individuals across various categories who have "made outstanding achievements in each field of art or who have opened up a new frontier."

The ceremony was held today in Tokyo and, as you can see below, Kojima wore a pin showing Homo Ludens and anti-war cufflinks with a matching necktie. He does scrub up nicely.

"I am very happy that the immature medium of games has been highly evaluated as a cultural art form of 'expression'," writes Kojima. "I will continue to devote myself to the creation of digital entertainment. Thank you very much for your continued support."

You want a close-up of his accessories? Of course you do.

And here Kojima is receiving the award.

Kojima's career in games began at Konami in 1986, where he first worked on a title called Penguin Adventure for the MSX home computer. After this he began designing a title called Lost Warld [sic] for the MSX, which would eventually be cancelled, before moving on to a game called Metal Gear that was already partially developed. Due to the hardware's limitations when it came to combat, Kojima saw the opportunity to re-focus its systems on avoiding enemies—the stealth genre was born, and the rest is history.

Hideo Kojima is now the second game creator to receive this award: Nintendo’s north star Shigeru Miyamoto received it in 2010.

Rich Stanton
Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."