Tsunekazu Ishihara

Tsunekaz Ishihara (Tsunekazu also seen; Japanese: 石原恒和 Ishihara Tsunekazu, born on November 27, 1957) is president and CEO of The Pokémon Company and producer of Pokémon. He manages all aspects of the Pokémon franchise including the anime, games, and the TCG.

Tsunekaz Ishihara

History

Ishihara graduated from the University of Tsukuba in 1983, with a masters in Art and Design. Soon after, he joined Nintendo, where he was the producer in such titles as EarthBound and Mario's Picross. His involvement with Pokémon started in the early 1990's, when he started helping with the development of Pokémon Red and Green. Shortly after, he was inspired to create a trading card game based on the titles. In April of 1998, The Pokémon Company was established and Ishihara was given the position of representative director. In 2001, he was named the president.

Credits

Producer

Executive producer

Production supervisor

Supervision

Trivia

Ishihara's favorite Pokémon is Exeggutor because he used it all throughout the debugging and testing of Pokémon Red and Green Versions.
The character Ishihara in the Pokémon Trading Card Game GB is based on Tsunekaz Ishihara.
A hidden Easter egg in Pokémon Red and Green sets the rival's default name to Ishihara as soon as the game is turned on. This name does not appear in the default names list and is overwritten as soon as the player has a chance to choose a name.
One of the default player names in the Japanese Blue is Tsunekaz, much as "Satoshi" is for Red and "Shigeru" is for Green.
- Similarly, one of the default rival names in Pokémon FireRed Version is Kaz (Japanese: ツネカズ Tsunekazu).