Tatsuo Nomura

is a Japanese software developer. Born in China with partial Japanese descent, he moved to Japan as a child and studied computer science. He worked in the Google Maps development team before moving to Niantic Labs, where he directed the augmented reality mobile game Pokémon Go.

Early life and education Nomura was born in 1986 and grew up as Shi Lei in a poor village in Heilongjiang of Northeast China. His paternal grandmother was a Japanese who remained in China after World War II and married a Chinese man. At the age of nine, his family moved to Japan and he settled in Nagano Prefecture, changing his name to Tatsuo Nomura. He initially could not converse in Japanese.

He studied computer engineering at Shinshu University and graduated in 2009. He continued his studies at the Tokyo Institute of Technology under the supervision of Satoshi Matsuoka. He wrote a paper on supercomputing which was well-received by American researchers, and he earned his master's degree in 2011.

Idea of Pokémon Go In 2014, Nomura devised an idea to create a Google Maps April Fools' Day prank which would allow users to hunt Pokémon on their mobile devices. Nomura's involvement drew the attention of John Hanke, a former leader of the Google Maps division, who requested Nomura contact TPC once more to propose an augmented reality Pokémon game. According to TPC president Tsunekazu Ishihara, Nomura was selected as lead due to "his diversity beyond nationality and borders". He was also the director for the 2021 mobile game Pikmin Bloom and the director for the 2023 mobile game Monster Hunter Now.