Enjoying this article? Add us as a preferred source on Google.
Shigeru Miyamoto, Representative Director and Fellow at Nintendo, will receive the Order of Culture for Reiwa 8 (2026). He is one of the eight recipients announced by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology on October 23, 2026, and the first person from the games field to be given the Order of Culture. He is 73. The investiture ceremony will be held at the Imperial Palace on November 3.
Miyamoto was already the first person from games to be named a Person of Cultural Merit, in fiscal 2019, and seven years later he has reached Japan’s highest decoration for cultural achievement. He joined Nintendo in 1977 and went on to create Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Pikmin.
This article lays out the facts of the award, the people honored alongside him, and what Miyamoto said at the press conference held at Nintendo’s Kyoto headquarters ahead of the announcement. The line about Super Mario’s greatest invention being “not fighting Bowser” should land with people who make games and people who play them alike.
- What is settled: the Order of Culture, a first for games, investiture on November 3
- The eight recipients, and the seven years since Person of Cultural Merit
- What he said at the press conference: Mario’s greatest invention, generative AI, advice to newcomers
- Fifty years of Shigeru Miyamoto, from Donkey Kong to Pikmin
Start with the confirmed facts.
What has been confirmed about Shigeru Miyamoto’s Order of Culture?
Shigeru Miyamoto will receive the Order of Culture for Reiwa 8 (2026). The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced it on October 23, 2026, and the investiture ceremony takes place at the Imperial Palace on November 3. This is the first time the Order of Culture has gone to someone from games or digital entertainment.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Recipient | Shigeru Miyamoto (Representative Director and Fellow, Nintendo) |
| Age | 73 (born November 16, 1952) |
| Category | Order of Culture (Reiwa 8 / 2026). Games and media arts field |
| Announced | October 23, 2026 (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) |
| Investiture ceremony | November 3, 2026, Imperial Palace |
| Earlier honor | Person of Cultural Merit, fiscal 2019 (a first for the games field) |
The Order of Culture goes to people whose contributions to the development of culture are judged outstanding, and only a handful of recipients are named each year. A list long dominated by academia and the fine arts now has games on it. Miyamoto himself told the press conference that he “started out in a medium where nobody even knew whether it had a shape, so being treated like this is lucky.” Writing it off as luck is very Miyamoto, but fifty years of accumulated work is not something you settle with the word luck.
Who else is being honored? Seven years on from Person of Cultural Merit
Eight people will receive the Order of Culture for Reiwa 8 (2026). Alongside Shigeru Miyamoto are lighting designer Motoko Ishii, architect Toyo Ito, biological scientist Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa, French literature scholar Tetsuya Shiokawa, organic synthetic chemist Kenso Soai, popular music figure Shunichi Tokura, and immunologist Shigekazu Nagata.
| Recipient | Field |
|---|---|
| Motoko Ishii | Lighting design |
| Toyo Ito | Architecture |
| Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa | Biological science |
| Tetsuya Shiokawa | French literature |
| Kenso Soai | Organic synthetic chemistry |
| Shunichi Tokura | Popular music |
| Shigekazu Nagata | Immunology |
| Shigeru Miyamoto | Games and media arts |
With Shunichi Tokura from popular music, this becomes a year in which two of the recipients come from the entertainment side. When Miyamoto was named a Person of Cultural Merit in fiscal 2019, that was already a first for the games field. Plenty of people move from Person of Cultural Merit to the Order of Culture, but a seven-year gap is on the short side. The speed at which games are being treated as culture shows up in exactly those seven years.
What did Shigeru Miyamoto say at the press conference?
At the press conference, Miyamoto refused to call the award his own achievement. Games, he said, are “not something one person makes; they are something you make together with a lot of people,” and he is accepting the honor as a representative of those people, adding that he wants to share it with everyone who was involved.
There is no other medium whose interface is designed while facing the customer as seriously as games are
Source:Famitsu.com
That one sentence contains the whole basis for why Miyamoto calls games culture. If film and music are media that travel in one direction, a game is designed with the movement of the player’s hands built into the plan. He also said that “there used to be a wall between people who played games and people who did not, and games becoming culture means games becoming ordinary,” stressing how big it is that three generations of a family can all know the same game.
Super Mario’s greatest invention was “not fighting Bowser”
Talking about the birth of Super Mario Bros., the greatest invention Miyamoto pointed to was not fighting Bowser. Working inside the technical limits of the time, he landed on the thought, “if it is a game where you keep running to the right, how about making it so that reaching the far right means you win,” and that became the basic shape of the side-scrolling action game. The goal was advancing, not defeating enemies. That single decision set the grammar of the action game.
Generative AI, what it means to make something, and a word to young developers
On generative AI, he said it “is very much a good thing if it becomes an opportunity for everyone to think sincerely about what it really means to make something.” Even in an era where AI handles the labor, the question of what sits at the core of creation gets asked. To young developers, he said they should start from a root idea along the lines of “wouldn’t it be interesting if I tried this,” rather than modifying somebody else’s excellent game.
Coming from a guy who calls Yoshiki Okamoto his spiritual mentor, maybe this does not count for much, but the “reach the right side and you win” story straightens my back every time I hear it. Invention is not about making things more complicated. It is about deciding what not to do. Even for someone who does not make games, that works as a way to approach a job.
Fifty years of Shigeru Miyamoto, from Donkey Kong to Pikmin
Born in Kyoto Prefecture in 1952, he graduated from Kanazawa College of Art and joined Nintendo in 1977. He arrived as a game designer with Donkey Kong in 1981, then launched Nintendo’s two defining series with Super Mario Bros. in 1985 and The Legend of Zelda in 1986.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1977 | Joins Nintendo |
| 1981 | Donkey Kong (arcade) |
| 1985 | Super Mario Bros. (Famicom) |
| 1986 | The Legend of Zelda (Famicom Disk System) |
| 2001 | Pikmin (GameCube) |
| Fiscal 2019 | Person of Cultural Merit (a first for the games field) |
| 2026 | Order of Culture (a first for the games field) |
Mario and Zelda are both still active more than 40 years on, and the live-action The Legend of Zelda movie opens on April 30, 2027. A Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time arrives on November 5. The Order of Culture is an honor for past achievement, but what Miyamoto built has not turned into past tense. That is what it means that the first recipient from the games field is Shigeru Miyamoto.
Enjoying this article? Add us as a preferred source on Google.
In summary: Shigeru Miyamoto’s Order of Culture
Shigeru Miyamoto, 73, Representative Director and Fellow at Nintendo, will receive the Order of Culture for Reiwa 8 (2026). The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced it on October 23, 2026, and the investiture ceremony is at the Imperial Palace on November 3. It is the first Order of Culture awarded to someone from games, and the seven people honored alongside him are Motoko Ishii, Toyo Ito, Tsuneyoshi Kuroiwa, Tetsuya Shiokawa, Kenso Soai, Shunichi Tokura and Shigekazu Nagata. Miyamoto had been named the first Person of Cultural Merit from the games field in fiscal 2019. At the press conference he said games are “not something one person makes,” called Super Mario’s greatest invention “not fighting Bowser,” and framed generative AI as “an opportunity to think about what it really means to make something.”
Games have become culture, the saying goes, and Miyamoto rephrased that as games having become ordinary. What the decoration proves is not Nintendo’s greatness but the existence of a society where three generations of a family know the same characters. And the person who built that ordinariness is still working, still thinking about what comes next.
Reach the right side and you win. That call, made fifty years ago, arrives at the Imperial Palace on November 3.
Read Next
Snicker Kitamura
Leave a Reply