A popular claim about Pokémon’s creator has been debunked
A long-running claim that Pokemon creator Satoshi Tajiri has Asperger Syndrome has seemingly been debunked.
Major outlets, including the BBC, have reported for years that Game Freak‘s Satoshi Tajiri has Asperger’s, which is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties in social interaction.
Asperger’s is also characterised by repetitive patterns of behaviour and interests such as collecting, which outlets who have claimed Tajiri has the form of autism have often provided as a perceived link for why the Pokémon games were created.
Over the years this has been widely accepted as fact by many fans, however, according to new research, the much-repeated claim is not true.
According to a new investigation by DidYouKnowGaming, almost every claim that Taiji is autistic stretching back over a decade was unsourced, and even those which were sourced used dubious, or false information as proof.
As DidYouKnowGaming puts it: “There is no record of Satoshi Tajiri ever saying he’s autistic, or that any of his friends or co-workers at Game Freak said it either”.
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The claim is so widely accepted as a fact that it even prompted a response from developer Game Freak. Game Freak’s information coordinator Yuri Sakurai reached out to the website www.asperger-syndrome.me.ukwith the following message (transcribed by VGC):
“When I was seeing Tajiri’s page on Wikipedia, although there is a text about Asperger syndrome in ‘Satoshi Tajiri’ page. There is the state of being untrue. Then, this untrue causes from your website. This is not the truth. Tajiri has not Autism and Asperger syndrome. ”
This is the first, and only comment from Game Freak on the
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