Kojima held that the deeper reason for going to space was not…

“I could probably make games in space. I want to be the first.”

In 2009 Kojima wrote that if he could have only one wish it would be to go into space before he dies. He said a brief orbit just beyond Earth’s atmosphere would be enough, and that to make it happen he would give up even his position as a game designer, his family, or his own life.

When journalist Toyohiro Akiyama traveled to space in 1990 with funding from TBS and Soviet technology, Kojima realized a civilian route existed and reacted with frustration and jealousy for not having imagined it. This made him understand that he did not simply want to reach space but to train and go as an astronaut; for that reason he did not feel the same envy when game designer Richard Garriott paid about $30 million to travel to the International Space Station in 2008.

“what will happen if humans go into space?, or what will be the influence of living in space on the human body and human relationships?”

After the Tohoku earthquake, fans and associates from around the world advised Kojima to leave Japan and use his life and resources to create elsewhere rather than spend them rebuilding the past. Kojima did not leave: he realized he could not separate his own purpose from Japan’s reconstruction and that, despite considering himself cosmopolitan, his substance was innately Japanese. Satori helped him out of the standstill with a further conclusion: he should not confine himself to Eastern, Western, or national labels, but create and share his own world—the world of Hideo Kojima.