There is a small but growing Python community in Japan. Many people, even some of those Python enthusiasts who living in Japan, are unaware of this and don’t know who any of these people are. There are a lot of reasons for this but the number one reason is probably the large language barrier between Japanese speakers and non-Japanese speakers. Currently it can be kind of hard to know who’s interested in what, or who the go-to person is for a particular topic. I think that’s a shame and that there should be more communication going on with the community in Japan and the wider Python community, and a lot of the Japanese community leaders don’t get the kind of credit or publicity they deserve outside of Asia. I hope to help solve that problem with this blog post by providing a kind of who’s who of Japanese Python community members.
Atsuo Ishimoto
Atsuo is the owner of the python.jp domain name and one of the original moderators of the python.jp mailing list. He is a long time Python user and community leader.
- Twitter @atsuoishimoto
Atsushi Shibata
Atsushi Shibata is probably the most well known community leader in Japan. He wrote the wildly popular “Minna no Python” (Everyone’s Python) and led in moderating the python.jp mailing list for many years.
- Twitter @ats
Ryosuke Nakai (Voluntas)
Ryosuke is the organizer of Python Onsen (PySpa) and Python Developers Festa (PyFes). Both are popular Python community events. Python Onsen is an weekend-long event where fellow Python enthusiasts travel to a Japanese Ryokan and spend the weekend coding and goofing off. PyFes is a day long event where members give tutorials and talks on Python.
- Twitter @voluntas
Manabu Terada (terapyon)
Manabu is the chair of the PyCon JP management team, and long-time Plone community leader. Manabu has been indispensable as the PyCon JP chair in doing the nitty-gritty organizing of the conference. A job I do not envy. He also runs his own development/consulting company focusing on Plone and Python development.
- Twitter @terapyon
Takayuki Shimizukawa
Takayuki is a long time Python user and the leader of the Sphinx community in Japan. He has also been instrumental in organizing PyCon JP and in organizing the Python mini-hackathon event.
- Twitter @shimizukawa
Takanori Suzuki
Takanori is the leader of the Python Bouldering (KabePy) event. KabePy is an indoor bouldering event for Python community members. Takanori is also highly involved with PyCon JP and the Python mini-hackathon events.
- Twitter @takonory
Yoshiki Shibukawa
Yoshiki helped form the Sphinx users group in Japan and has been active in the study meetup culture in Tokyo. He co-authored the translation of Tarek Zaide’s Expert Python Programming with Takayuki Shimizukawa, Inada Naoki, and Tetsuya Morimoto.
- Twitter @shibukawa
Makoto Tsuyuki
Makoto has been a leader in the Django community for a long time. He wrote one of the first (if not the first) Japanese Django book and has given numerous talks on Python and Django.
- Twitter @everes