Sakana-kun

Sakana-kun's list of occupations reads like a punchline: illustrator, television personality, ichthyologist, author. Any one of them is a full career, yet all four grow from the same root — an obsession with fish that nobody ever managed to talk him out of. Born in Tokyo in 1975, he turns fifty-one this year, and the boxfish hat and the delighted shouting can make him look like pure children's entertainment. Then you learn he was part of the story behind the rediscovery of the kunimasu, a trout long declared extinct. "Follow your passion" is far too small a phrase. He pushed a childhood fixation all the way into science.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Sakana-kun

Name (Japanese)

さかなクン

Reading

さかなくん

Born

August 6, 1975 (age 51)

Origin

Tokyo, Japan

Occupation

illustrator / tarento / ichthyologist / author

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Leo / Rabbit

Works summary

Appearances

108 (2002–2026)

By year

2002: 4, 2003: 1, 2005: 1, 2006: 1, 2007: 2, 2008: 4, 2009: 4, 2010: 1, 2011: 6, 2012: 5, 2015: 4, 2016: 8, 2017: 4, 2018: 2, 2019: 8, 2020: 5, 2021: 6, 2022: 14, 2023: 2, 2024: 2, 2025: 5, 2026: 3

Debut work

和書 / 2002-09 / 小学館 / 9784097271482

Filmography / notable works

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakana-kun
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%81%95%E3%81%8B%E3%81%AA%E3%82%AF%E3%83%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11267605

Tags

• Tokyo
• illustrator
• tarento
• ichthyologist

Last updated

September 18, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.