Michael Kogan

Michael Kogan
Native name	Майкл Коган
Born	Michaell Kogan January 1, 1920 Odessa, Ukrainian People's Republic
Died	February 5, 1984(1984-02-05) (aged 64) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	Businessman, founder of Taito Corporation
Children	2

Michaell “Misha” Kogan (January 1, 1920 – February 5, 1984) was a Ukrainian Jewish businessman who founded the Japanese games maker Taito Corporation.

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 Yasue Norihiro, a member of the Japanese Army's intelligence services and one of the architects of the Fugu Plan, an ill-fated 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

In 1953 he established the Taito Trading Company (株式会社太東貿易, Kabushiki-gaisha Taitō Bōeki) which eventually became Taito Corporation. The company started out importing and distributing vending machines and then jukeboxes before evolving to manufacture their own.^[1]

He died during a business trip in Los Angeles in 1984.

His son, Abba, lives in Monaco. His daughter, Rita, lives in Southern California and is 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.^[2]

References