Michael Kogan

Michael “Misha” Kogan (January 1, 1920 – February 5, 1984) was a Ukrainian entrepreneur who founded the Japanese video game company Taito. Early life Kogan was born in Odesa on January 1, 1920 to Riva and Kalman Kogan. His family moved to Harbin, Manchuria to escape the Russian Revolution, where he later met Colonel Norihiro Yasue, a member of the Japanese Army's intelligence services and one of the architects of the Fugu Plan, a plan to settle European Jewish refugees in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. He moved to Tokyo in 1939, where he spent most of the duration of the war studying at Waseda School of Economics. He moved to Tianjin in 1944 before returning to Japan in 1950, settling in Setagaya, Tokyo. Career Michael Kogan's founded his first business in 1944 in Shanghai, called Taitung, its business dealings included natural hair wigs, floor coverings, and hog bristles. Kogan closed Taitung in 1950 after the Communist takeover of China and started his second business in Japan shortly after, a company on clothing distribution, named Taito Yoko. The constant loss of products and negligent employees caused Taito Yoko to struggle financially, and it was eventually abolished. Kogan established the Taito Trading Company on August 24, 1953, and it eventually became Taito Corporation. The company started out importing and distributing vending machines and then jukeboxes before evolving to manufacture their own.