Toyohiro Akiyama, first Japanese citizen to go to space, dies at 84

Toyohiro Akiyama, the first Japanese to go to space, has died from lower gastrointestinal bleeding, domestic media reported. He was 84.

Akiyama, a television reporter for the Tokyo Broadcasting System, blasted off into space aboard the Soviet Soyuz capsule in 1990, which later docked with the Mir space station.

Akiyama spent nine days in space, broadcasting his zero-gravity experiences live and describing the experiments he conducted.

He became the first person from Japan ever to leave Earth’s atmosphere. Mamoru Mohri, whom the National Space Development Agency of Japan (the predecessor of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) had tapped for an earlier space mission aboard NASA’s Space Shuttle Endeavor, had to have his departure postponed following the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.

In 1995, five years after coming back to Earth, Akiyama quit the TBS network and moved to the town of Takine, Fukushima Prefecture, to start mushroom farming, saying this was a natural extension of his journalistic drive to deepen his hands-on knowledge and experience.

“What is the most basic human activity? Eating,” Akiyama told The Japan Times in 2013. “How do farmers think about the food they grow? And what role has rice farming played in the history of Japan? I felt I couldn’t die without having some basic knowledge about these things.”

But following the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, and the reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that followed, he was forced to abandon his farming and home.

After moving around a few times to avoid the risks of radiation exposure, he eventually started teaching agriculture at Kyoto University of Art and Design (now Kyoto University of the Arts) in November 2011. He taught at the university until March 2023.

Later in life, he was critical of the mainstream media and had expressed hopes that the younger generation would develop critical thinking skills without being completely swayed by news.

“It might sound like I’m spitting in my own face — as I made a living in the media for 30 years — but I’m reflecting deeply on some of the horrible acts we have committed in the media — things which led people to lose their power to think for themselves and let others do their thinking,” he said. “You can’t be creative by letting others think for you. I think the act of farming — the experience of “listening” to the wind and the light through all of your senses, as well as smelling and feeling the earth — offers the opportunity for students … to get their brains rewired.”