A Man Who Created Pokemon

Front of the original hardcover book, without the obi strip.

Satoshi Tajiri: A Man Who Created Pokemon is a 2004 book containing a series of interviews with the titular founder of Game Freak, conducted between October 2002 and December 2003. Tajiri talks about his childhood, his early years as a writer, the founding of his company, and how he came up with the core ideas behind Pokémon.

The book contains a lot of footnotes. And when I say a lot, I really mean a lot. It has 159 footnotes in total, spread over 200 pages. The footnotes make machine translating the book more difficult.

This book should not be confused with the manga of the same name. These two books are not related.

Table of contents[edit]

Chapter	Pages
Cover (without obistrip, without sleeve), Back (without obistrip, without sleeve)
p0_2, p0_3, p0_4, p0_5, p0_6
	1
Preface	2, 3
Table of contents	4, 5
Satoshi Tajiri's Timeline	6, 7
	8, 9, 10
Chapter 1
Encounter with Satoshi Tajiri	11 – 21
Column 1: Television Games of the 80's	22 – 39
Special collection: Complete reproduction of the first Game Freak issue	40 – 54
Game Freak All Batuk Number List	55 – 60
Chapter 2
Satoshi Tajiri's 80's	61 – 84
Column 2: A very short subculture theory	85 – 87
Special Collection "Quinty" Development Document	88 – 94
Chapter 3
Satoshi Tajiri's 90s	95 – 110
Column 3: Television Games of the 1990s	111 – 128
Special Collection of "Pokémon" Development Documents	129 – 144
Conversation Satoshi Tajiri X Ken Sugimori	145 – 168
Chapter 4
Satoshi Tajiri's Creation	169 – 197

Afterword	198 – 199
Publishing information	200
	201, '02, '03

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Release[edit]

A Man Who Created Pokemon was originally released as a hardcover book on 6 March 2004 by Ohta Publishing. A bunkobon version was published on 22 April 2009 by Media Factory, the same company that publishes the Pokémon card game.

Hardcover: Google Books, amazon.com, amazon.co.jp (ISBN: 978-4872338331)
Pocket book: Google Books, amazon.com, amazon.co.jp (ISBN: 978-4840127752)

The hardcover and bunkobon versions do not differ in terms of content.

Note that amazon.com (but not amazon.co.jp) refers to the hardcover version as a paperback, i.e. a softcover. This is incorrect. I have the book right here, and it's a hardcover. To my knowledge, the only softcover is the pocket book version.

Title[edit]

The original, Japanese title of this book is 『田尻智ポケモンを創った男』. Most people will probably translate the second part, after Tajiri's name, as "The Man Who Created Pokemon", not as "A Man Who Created Pokemon". However, both the original and the re-released version of the book have the phrase "A Man Who Created Pokemon" on the cover. I decided to go along with that, even though it reminds me of so-called Engrish.

Download[edit]

For a ZIP file containing all scans, go here (849 MB).
Here is a mirror of the ZIP file at MEGA.

I can create a PDF document of the book if all pages have been proofread.
Similarly, I can create a PDF document of the book if all pages have been translated.

You can help!

Gallery[edit]

Satoshi Tajiri. Crop of p0_5.
Tajiri. Crop of p9.
Tajiri. Crop of p59.
Tajiri and Ken Sugimori. Crop of p143.
Group image of the dev team. Crop of p197. See Group image subpage.
Same image, with numbers. See Group image subpage.
Bunkobon version, cover.
Bunkobon version, back.
Size comparison.