Early life

Kojima was born in Tokyo, Japan[3] and moved to western Japan at the age of three. He said
that early on in his life he often had to deal with death,[4] with his father passing away when he
was only 13.[5]
When he was little the Kojima family moved to a small city called Shirasaki.[4] Just as quickly,
his family soon moved to Kawanishi, Hygo[6] in the Kansai region.[4] Kojima has noted that
growing up he was a latchkey kid, often having to look after himself when he came home
from school.[4] Staying at home by himself in isolation still affects him to this day stating,
"[whenever] I travel and stay at a hotel I put the TV on as soon as I enter the room, just to deal
with the feeling of loneliness."[4]
Initially wanting to be an artist or illustrator, he was often discouraged by societal norms of
Japan which favored finding safe, well paying jobs and was also discouraged because his
uncle was also an artist but suffered from financial difficulties.[4] He eventually started writing
short stories and began to send them to Japanese magazines but was never able to get
anything published. He cites that his stories were often 400 pages long while most magazines
wanted their short stories to be around 100 pages.[4] Eventually he shifted his focus to making
films with his friend who had an 8mm camera.[4]

Career
In an interview on G4's TV series Icons,[7][8] Kojima describes much of his earlier career and
influences for game design. Kojima grew up early in life watching movies with his parents.
While studying economics in university, Kojima found himself playing video games during
his free time, mainly games on the Famicom. In his fourth year in university, Kojima
surprised colleagues by announcing his intentions to join the video game industry, despite
initially having ambitions of becoming a film director.[9] He felt a career in video games
would be more satisfying.[10] The majority of his friends and colleagues strongly discouraged
Kojima from pursuing video games due to it being a new medium that wasn't as resp