What is Hiroyuki Nishimura?

Hiroyuki Nishimura (西村 博之 Nishimura Hiroyuki; born November 16 1976) is the founder and an administrator of 2channel, the largest and most influential BBS in Japan. He is usually known simply as ひろゆき (Hiroyuki).

Career

Nishimura was born in Kanagawa but raised in Tokyo. He founded the company Tokyo Access in 1998 while he was at Chuo University. In May 1999, he opened 2channel while he was studying at the University of Central Arkansas. In June 2001, he founded Irregulars and Partners, Inc with Ichiro Yamamoto (handle: Kirikomi Taicho), but later left there.

Early 2ch

Nishimura, Ichiro Yamamoto, and Yakin were the early central management members of 2channel, but Ichiro Yamamoto left the group in 2002, and Nishimura resigned from his company.

Yakin (also known by the handle FOX) is a server specialist, and has been managing most of the 2channel servers since the Neomugicha incident, a case in 2000 in which a 17-year-old posted messages threatening to hijack a bus, and then went on to kill one person in the hijacking. The event caused a huge wave of user access, and the old servers went down.

Personality

Nishimura is known for loving "Umaibo" (Japanese snack), and for a period of time the server names of the 2channel site were taken from the names of "Umaibo", like pizza, curry, potato, and so forth.

He occasionally talks about self responsibility in the Internet world. There is a huge quantity of information on the net, but among that information there is both truth and lies. He emphasizes that we need to have the ability to distinguish between them. He often says, "If you would not like to know something in others, you should not write it anywhere."

Position

As of January 2007, Nishimura is an advisor to Skip-Up KK, CEO of Tokyo Plus KK, Director of Mirai Kensaku Brazil (Future Search Brazil) Ltd., and Director of Niwango Inc.

External links

• Interview in RealTokyo
• Interview in Japan Media Review