Toyohiro Akiyama

• I Kosmoreporter Soyuz TM -10 TM-11/Sojus (1990 )

Toyohiro Akiyama (Japanese秋山 豊 寛, Toyohiro Akiyama; born July 22, 1942 in Setagaya, Tokyo ) is a former Japanese television journalist who was known by its flight with a Soyuz spacecraft to the Soviet space station Mir in 1990. He is the first Japanese man who flew into space.

In 1971, Akiyama was a reporter for the Japanese television company TBS ( Tokyo Broadcasting System). Between 1967 and 1971 he also worked for the BBC World Service.

With the selection of Akiyama in August 1989, the Soviet space agency began individual to sell seats on Sojusflügen also to non-state enterprises. For the flight of Soyuz TM -11 in December 1990, a room for 28 million U.S. dollars was sold to the Japanese television network TBS. Akiyama was the first astronaut whose mission was not financed by his state and also flew the first Japanese in space.

The launch of Soyuz TM -11 was carried out on 2 December 1990 from Baikonur. Akiyama sent daily ten-minute television transmission and 20 minutes of radio reports. The landing took place on 10 December 1990 aboard Soyuz TM -10 in the Kazakh SSR.

After his flight into space, he was deputy director of TBS News Division, until he left TBS in October 1995.

Then he built as an organic farmer in Tamura ( Fukushima prefecture ) rice, vegetables and shiitake mushrooms. Because of the nuclear disaster in 2011 is 32 km away nuclear power plant Fukushima Daiichi, he moved to Fujioka in Gunma prefecture.

Toyohiro Akiyama is married and has two children.

The asteroid ( 4714 ) Toyohiro was named after him.