After 31 years in games, Persona director Katsura Hashino just got a 'Newcomer Award' and $5,000 from the Japanese government

Katsura Hashino has been doing this some time. The designer, most well-known for his work as director on Persona 3, 4, and 5 in addition to, most not too long ago, Metaphor: ReFantazio, has been working at Atlus since I used to be actually one yr previous, all the best way again in 1994.

So it is with amused bafflement that I carry you the information that Hashino has simply been awarded Japan’s (tempo your self) “Minister of Schooling, Tradition, Sports activities, Science and Know-how’s New Face Award within the Media Arts Division of the Arts Encouragement Prize” (through Automaton). Atlus tweeted that he had obtained the prize on Monday.

That’s to say he is the recipient of a prize that the Japanese authorities particularly provides out to, um, new faces. Newcomers, you realize. On the award’s official web site (machine translated), the physique chargeable for the prize refers to it as a “Newcomer Award” and notes that it comes with an 800,000 yen (about $5,000) prize.

Hashino richly deserves an award, after all. The mark the Persona sequence has made beneath his stewardship is big, and Metaphor: ReFantazio is a rattling good time too. I simply discover it humorous he acquired one of many two “new face” awards as a substitute of the opposite two prizes, the much less particular “Minister of Schooling, Tradition, Sports activities, Science and Know-how Award” which, by the way, comes with an even bigger 1.2 million yen ($8,000) prize.

In spite of everything, none aside from Hideo Kojima acquired the latter prize again in 2022, though by that time Kojima had been engaged on video games for 36 years. Perhaps 35 years is the cut-off, the purpose at which you are not a newcomer? Perhaps Japan’s authorities is staffed by Asari-like politicians who all reside to be 1,000 years previous.

Anyway, neither Hashino or Atlus appeared notably put out by the brand new face award, so perhaps I am the one taking loopy capsules right here. Keep tuned for the Japanese authorities’s upcoming 30-under-30 awards; I hear high prize is tipped to go to Beat Takeshi.