Toyohiro Akiyama, Japan’s Chain-Smoking ‘Space Antihero,’ Dies at 84

Toyohiro Akiyama, Japan’s Chain-Smoking ‘Space Antihero,’ Dies at 84 - The New York Times

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Toyohiro Akiyama, Japan’s Chain-Smoking ‘Space Antihero,’ Dies at 84

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/10/world/asia/toyohiro-akiyama-dead.html

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Toyohiro Akiyama, Japan’s Chain-Smoking ‘Space Antihero,’ Dies at 84

A journalist, he was the first Japanese person to enter space, joining a Soviet crew as part of a spectacular $35 million ratings stunt in 1990.

Listen · 8:25 min

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!A man waving in a spacesuit is held by the arm and shoulder by two men on either side of him

*Toyohiro Akiyama waving from a space capsule after returning to Earth in December 1990.

Credit...

Kyodo, via Reuters*

By

Javier C. Hernández and Hisako Ueno

Reporting from Tokyo

Sept. 10, 2026, 5:00 p.m. ET

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Toyohiro Akiyama, a television reporter who became the first Japanese person to enter space, earning the nickname “space antihero” for his lack of bravura and insatiable cigarette cravings, died on Aug. 26 at his home in Odai, Japan, about 85 miles southeast of Kyoto. He was 84.

The cause was lower gastrointestinal bleeding, his wife, Reiko, said.

In 1990, at the end of the Cold War, Mr. Akiyama became the star of an improbable reality show, broadcast live before millions, when he was sent by his network, the Tokyo Broadcasting System, on a commercial voyage to the Mir space station alongside two Soviet cosmonauts. It was a spectacular $35 million ratings stunt, with TBS paying about half that amount directly to the Soviet Union to include Mr. Akiyama, then 48, in the launch. And it would make him the first journalist to go to space.

Image

*The Soyuz spacecraft launching on Dec. 2, 1990.

Credit...

Gennady Galperin/Reuters*

It seemed plausible that Mr. Akiyama would return a national hero. Instead, he was wracked by nausea and discomfort on the eight-day mission; his Soviet colleagues later said they had never seen a man vomit so much.

Mr. Akiyama devoted his broadcasts from the cosmos to stories about headaches, bland food and complicated bathroom protocols, and they contained no grand revelations or meditations on the meaning of life. A chain smoker, he frequently pined for cigarettes — and for natto, the fermented beans of his home country.

The voyage did not turn out to be the ratings hit that his network expected. But Mr. Akiyama earned his place in history as an unlikely journeyman, inspiring some of Japan’s first professional astronauts.

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