56 American writers of Japanese descent

Ai Ogawa was an American poet and educator who won the 1999 National Book Award for Poetry for Vice: New and Selected Poems. Ai is known for her mastery of the dramatic monologue as a poetic form, as well as for taking on dark, controversial topics in her work. About writing in the dramatic monologue form, she's said: "I want to take the narrative 'persona' poem as far as I can, and I've never been one to do things in halves. All the way or nothing. I won't abandon that desire."

Toshiko Akiyoshi is a Japanese-American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, and bandleader.

Gregg Araki is an American filmmaker. He is noted for his heavy involvement with the New Queer Cinema movement. His film Kaboom (2010) was the first winner of the Cannes Film Festival Queer Palm.

Eugenie Clark, popularly known as The Shark Lady, was an American ichthyologist known for both her research on shark behavior and her study of fish in the order Tetraodontiformes. Clark was a pioneer in the field of scuba diving for research purposes. In addition to being regarded as an authority in marine biology, Clark was popularly recognized and used her fame to promote marine conservation.

Ann Curry is an American journalist and photojournalist, who has been a reporter for more than 30 years, focused on human suffering in war zones and natural disasters. Curry has reported from the wars in Kosovo, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Afghanistan, Darfur, Congo and the Central African Republic. Curry has covered numerous disasters, including the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, where her appeal via Twitter topped Twitter's 'most powerful' list, credited for helping speed the arrival of humanitarian planes.

Margaret Dilloway is a Japanese American author best known for her novels How To Be An American Housewife and The Care And Handling Of Roses With Thorns.

Dina Marie Fisher, known professionally as Dina Eastwood is an American reporter, TV news anchor, and actress. She is the former wife of actor and film director Clint Eastwood.

Cary Joji Fukunaga is an American filmmaker and television director.

Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and writer. Fukuyama is known for his book The End of History and the Last Man (1992), which argues that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free-market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity's sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government. However, his subsequent book Trust: Social Virtues and Creation of Prosperity (1995) modified his earlier position to acknowledge that culture cannot be cleanly separated from economics. Fukuyama is also associated with the rise of the neoconservative movement, from which he has since distanced himself.

Philip Kan Gotanda is an American playwright and filmmaker and a third generation Japanese American. Much of his work deals with Asian American issues and experiences.

Karl Taro Greenfeld is a journalist, novelist and television writer known primarily for his articles on life in modern Asia and both his fiction and non-fiction in The Paris Review.

Kimiko Hahn is an American poet and distinguished professor in the MFA program of Queens College, CUNY. Her work frequently deals with the reinvention of poetic forms and the intersecting of conflicting identities.

Larry Hama is an American comic-book writer, artist, actor, and musician who has worked in the fields of entertainment and publishing since the 1960s.

Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was an American art and photography critic, notable anarchist and poet of German and Japanese descent.

Joseph Heco was the first Japanese person to be naturalized as a United States citizen and the first to publish a Japanese language newspaper.

Stan Honda is an American photojournalist.

Garrett Kaoru Hongo is a Yonsei, fourth-generation Japanese American academic and poet. The work of this Pulitzer-nominated writer draws on Japanese American history and own experiences.

William Kumpai Hosokawa was a Japanese American writer and journalist. While interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, he was the editor of the internment camp's newspaper, The Heart Mountain Sentinel. After being freed from the camp in 1943, Hosokawa worked as a columnist and editor at The Denver Post for 38 years. He retired from the newspaper industry in 1992, at the age of 77.

Lawson Fusao Inada is a Japanese American poet. He was the fifth poet laureate of the state of Oregon.

Daniel Ken Inouye was a United States Senator from Hawaii from 1963 until his death in 2012. A member of the Democratic Party, he was President pro tempore of the United States Senate from 2010 until his death. Until the election of Kamala Harris as Vice President in 2020, Inouye was the highest-ranking Asian-American politician in U.S. history. Inouye also chaired various Senate Committees, including those on Intelligence, Commerce and Appropriations.

Cynthia Kadohata is a Japanese American children's writer best known for her young adult novel Kira-Kira which won the Newbery Medal in 2005. She won the National Book Award in Young People's Literature in 2013 for The Thing About Luck.

Julie Kagawa is an American author, best known for publishing and writing The Iron Fey Series consisting of 15 books including: The Iron King, The Iron Daughter, The Iron Queen, and The Iron Knight.

Michio Kaku is an American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science. He is a professor of theoretical physics in the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. Kaku has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and writes online blogs and articles. He has written the New York Times best sellers Physics of the Impossible (2008), Physics of the Future (2011), and The Future of the Mind (2014). Kaku has hosted several TV specials for the BBC, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and the Science Channel.

Michiko Kakutani is an American literary critic and former chief book critic for The New York Times. Her awards include a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Sen Katayama, born Yabuki Sugataro, was an early Japanese Marxist political activist and journalist, one of the original members of the American Communist Party and co-founder, in 1922, of the Japanese Communist Party. After 1884, he spent most of his life abroad, especially in the United States and the Soviet Union, where he was very active in the international socialist community, and after 1920 the communist community. Katayama had a weak base inside Japan, and was little known there. However, in the rest of the world, he was widely hailed as a leading spokesman for the Japanese socialist and communist movements.

Alma Katsu is an American writer of adult fiction. Her books have been translated into over a dozen languages, and has been published in the United Kingdom, Brazil, Spain and Italy.

Guy Takeo Kawasaki is an American marketing specialist, author, and Silicon Valley venture capitalist. He was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing their Macintosh computer line in 1984. He popularized the word evangelist in marketing the Macintosh as an "Apple evangelist" and the concepts of evangelism marketing and technology evangelism/platform evangelism in general.

Sarah Kay is an American poet. Known for her spoken word poetry, Kay is the founder and co-director of Project V.O.I.C.E., founded in 2004, a group dedicated to using spoken word an educational and inspirational tool.

Dr. Kyo Koike was a Japanese-American poet, physician and photographer.

Roland M. Kotani was an American politician and Democratic member of the Hawaii State House of Representatives. Kotani served as assistant majority floor leader and represented the Pearl City Pacific Palisades area.

James Kenji López-Alt, known as J. Kenji López-Alt or Kenji, is an American chef and food writer.

Janice Mirikitani is an American Sansei poet and activist.

Toshio Mori was an American author, best known for being one of the earliest Japanese–American writers to publish a book of fiction. He participated in drawing the UFO Robo Grendizer, the Japanese series TV in the years 1975-1977.

Milton Atsushi Murayama was an American novelist and playwright. A Nisei, he wrote the 1975 novel All I Asking for Is My Body, which is considered a classic novel of the experiences of Japanese Americans in Hawaii before and during World War II.

David Nakamura is an American journalist who works as the White House reporter for The Washington Post.

Ellen Nakashima is an American journalist who covers national security for The Washington Post. She is a 2014 and 2018 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize.

Dr. Franklin S. Odo is a Japanese American author, scholar, activist, and historian. Dr. Odo has served as the director of the Asian Pacific American Program at the Smithsonian Institution since the program’s inception in 1997. As the director of the APA Program, Dr. Odo has brought numerous exhibits to the Smithsonian highlighting the experiences of Chinese Americans, Native Hawaiians, Japanese Americans, Filipino Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Korean Americans, and Indian Americans. He is also the only Asian Pacific American curator at the National Museum of American History.

Apolo Anton Ohno is an American retired short track speed skating competitor and an eight-time medalist in the Winter Olympics. Ohno is the most decorated American Olympian at the Winter Olympics and was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 2019.

Miné Okubo was an American artist and writer. She is best known for her book Citizen 13660, a collection of 189 drawings and accompanying text chronicling her experiences in Japanese American internment camps during World War II.

David Ono is a Japanese American filmmaker and news anchor for KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, California. He is the co-anchor for ABC7 Eyewitness News at 4 and 6 p.m. with Ellen Leyva. He also fills in for co-anchor Marc Brown at 5 and 11 p.m.

Ruth Ozeki is an American-Canadian author, filmmaker and Zen Buddhist priest. Her books and films, including the novels My Year of Meats (1998), All Over Creation (2003), and A Tale for the Time Being (2013), seek to integrate personal narrative and social issues, and deal with themes relating to science, technology, environmental politics, race, religion, war and global popular culture. Her novels have been translated into over thirty languages. She teaches creative writing at Smith College where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities in the Department of English Language and Literature.

Nina Revoyr is an American novelist and children's advocate, best known for her award-winning 2003 novel Southland. She is also executive vice president and chief operating officer of Children's Institute, Inc., which provides clinical, youth development, family support and early childhood services to children and families affected by trauma, violence and poverty in Central and South Los Angeles.

Roxana Saberi is an American freelance journalist and former Miss North Dakota pageant winner. In 2009, she was held prisoner in Iran's Evin Prison for 101 days under accusations of espionage. She subsequently wrote a book about the experience.

Henry Sakaida was an American writer who authored a number of books relating to World War II. He was a third-generation Japanese-American.

Allen Say is a Japanese-American writer and illustrator. He is best known for Grandfather's Journey, a children's picture book detailing his grandfather's voyage from Japan to the United States and back again, which won the 1994 Caldecott Medal for illustration. This story is autobiographical and relates to Say's constant moving during his childhood. His work mainly focuses on Japanese and Japanese American characters and their stories, and several works have autobiographical elements.

Brenda Shaughnessy is an American poet.

Keto Shimizu is an American television writer, producer, and comic book writer. She is known for her work on the North American adaptation of Being Human and for her substantial contributions to Greg Berlanti's and The CW's Arrowverse.

Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki was an American academic, historian, ethnographer and author. He was born in Oahu, Hawaii, and his work addresses stereotypes of Asian Americans, such as the model minority concept.

Scott Takeda is an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. His film roles include parts in Everything Must Go, Dallas Buyers Club and Gone Girl.

George Takei is an American actor, author, and activist. He is best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the television series Star Trek. He also portrayed the character in six Star Trek feature films and one episode of Star Trek: Voyager.

Dalton Ichiro Tanonaka is an American television executive. He has spent most of his career in Asia, receiving several international and U.S. awards for his journalism work. Tanonaka is also known for his community service, providing scholarships to deserving students and speaking at schools and universities.

Brian Tochi is a Japanese-American actor. During the late 1960s through much of the 1970s, he was one of the most widely seen East Asian child actors working in U.S. television, appearing in various TV series and nearly a hundred advertisements. He is best known for his characters Toshiro Takashi from the Revenge of the Nerds film franchise, Cadet Tomoko Nogata from the third and fourth films in the Police Academy film series, and as the voice of Leonardo in the first three live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. He is also known as Brian Keith Tochi.

V. "Valhalla" Vale is an American editor, writer, interviewer, musician and, as Vale Hamanaka, was keyboardist for the initial configuration of Blue Cheer, before it became famous as a power trio. He is the publisher and primary contributor to books and magazines published by his company, RE/Search Publications. Vale is the host of the television talk show Counter Culture Hour on Public-access television cable TV channel 29 in San Francisco. The show is edited by his partner Marian Wallace. Vale is Japanese-American.

Maureen Crane Wartski was a naturalized American author She wrote many novels for children and young adults. Wartski's Eurasian heritage and her deep connection to the natural world inspired many of her novels which address such issues as racism, identity and bullying.

Hanya K Yanagihara is an American novelist, editor, and travel writer. She grew up in Hawaii.

Karl Gozo Yoneda was a Japanese American activist, union organizer, World War II veteran and author. He played a substantial role in the founding of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.