Michael Kogan
Michael “Misha” Kogan was a Ukrainian Jewish businessman who founded the Japanese video game company Taito.Early life
He was born in Odessa. His family moved to Harbin, Manchuria to escape the Russian Revolution of 1917, 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
Kogan established the Taito Trading Company in 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.
He died during a business trip in Los Angeles in 1984.
His son, Abba, lives in Monaco. His daughter, Rita, lived in Southern California and was married to Richard Edlund, founder of Boss Film Studios and an Academy Award-winning Visual Effects Supervisor. As of 2005 she still maintained an 8.50% holding of Taito stock.
