ZUN

(born March 18, 1977), known professionally as ZUN, is a Japanese independent video game developer and composer, known for creating the Touhou Project bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series through his one-man doujin group .

ZUN developed the first five Touhou games for the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer series, with the first, Highly Responsive to Prayers, released in August 1997; the series' signature danmaku mechanics were introduced in the second game, Story of Eastern Wonderland (also 1997). The release of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in August 2002 marked a shift to Microsoft Windows. Numerous sequels followed, including several spin-offs departing from the traditional bullet hell format. He has also collaborated with other circles to produce related print works and music albums.

His Touhou series has become more particularly notable as a prominent source of Japanese dōjin content, with the series spawning a vast amount of fan-made works such as artwork, music, print works, video games, and Internet memes. Because of this, it has gained a large cult following outside of Japan. In 2010, the Guinness World Records called Touhou "the most prolific fan-based shooter series" ever created. The popularity of the series and its derivative works has been attributed in part to the few restrictions placed by ZUN on the use of his content. ZUN is also known as the Hakurei Kannushi (博麗神主), which is also the name he uses for his Twitter account.

Early and personal life Jun'ya Ōta was born in Hakuba on March 18, 1977, and described himself as a "normal countryside kid." His first exposure to video games was when he was around five years old, when he played the Game & Watch and arcade games from Hakuba ski resorts. Later, his parents bought him a Family Computer and the Disk System add-on. He picked the pseudonym ZUN due to its similarity to his given name. ZUN claimed that SonSon, Super Mario Bros. and Street Fighter II were the games that left the greatest impression on him during this period. As ZUN was born shortly after his grandfather's death and his parents spent most their time working, ZUN was mostly raised by his grandmother, who was particularly strict, and heavily regulated the time he could spend playing video games.

In 2012, ZUN married a mobile game programmer, whom he has a son and daughter with.

ZUN likes to drink beer, and has said that he drinks at least once a day. He has created his own beer (sometimes called ZUN beer), and written reviews for beers in Comptiq. His favourite brand is Kirin.

Career

ZUN's first interest in developing video games came during his high school years. ZUN was part of his school's orchestra club, and originally wanted to create music for video games. Around 2001, he applied to Comiket as a music group under the name of Shanghai Alice Ensemble, but was rejected. In junior high school, he played the trumpet in a brass band and began composing his own music. The first game was originally intended as a practice in programming. The Touhou Project only became a shooting game series from the second game onwards, because the popularity of shooting games had revived due to RayForce and ZUN had long been a fan of such games. While most shoot 'em up games utilise a military or science fiction theme, ZUN wanted a game with a miko main character and a Shinto aesthetic, and started his own series with such. ZUN remarked how the general theme and direction of Touhou only started coming together in the sixth game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

After the release of the fifth Touhou game Mystic Square, ZUN graduated from university and the series became inactive for four years. During this time, he worked at Taito as a game developer and also composed music for various games created by members of Amusement Makers. He got the position by showing his interviewer the Touhou games he had created, after which, he was hired immediately. During his career at Taito, ZUN helped work on Greatest Striker, Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color, Bujingai, Graffiti Kingdom and Exit, as well as some other games that were ultimately cancelled. During this period, he contributed soundtracks to several games developed by his junior classmates in Amusement Makers, notably the , a series of bullet hell games for Microsoft Windows by Shunsatsu sare do? (瞬殺サレ道？). The series was intended as a counterpart to the Touhou Project, featuring highly similar gameplay as well as cameo appearances by Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, and Yuuka Kazami: - part of the Seihou Project - a bullet hell game by Pietoro (ぴえとろ) based on the manga - part of the Seihou Project - a collection of six MIDI tracks for the Roland SC-88 Pro, including unused music from Shuusou Gyoku

ZUN became focused on game development for Microsoft Windows, forming the one-man dōjin circle Team Shanghai Alice and self-publishing all subsequent games. According to ZUN, the Windows games represent a "clean slate" for the series canon, albeit with many carry-overs and references from the PC-98 era.

In 2007, he left his job at Taito to focus on the development of the Touhou Project. Later that year, ZUN provided programming for , a beer-themed bullet hell game published by . However, he did not initially plan for Touhou to become his life work.

While the Touhou games were initially created as a passion project, ZUN found that they were very successful – the first games he sold were Highly Responsive to Prayers and its sequel, The Story of Eastern Wonderland, at the 1997 Comiket. He brought a combined total of 80 copies, and was surprised when he was able to sell all of them. After Touhou's PC-98 era, he changed the name of his circle to "Shanghai Alice". According to ZUN, this name was chosen to fit the overall theme of the Touhou Project. "Shanghai", to him, is a multicultural city where Western and Oriental styles meet, and "Alice" evokes a feminine or gothic lolita feeling. The Japanese name, "Fantasy Ensemble" (幻樂団 Gengakudan), stems from ZUN's unsuccessful attempt to register the group as a music circle for Comiket 61 in December 2001; he decided to keep the name while applying as a game circle for Comiket 62, where he would release Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The same year, ZUN wrote Curiosities of Lotus Asia, short stories that appeared in various magazines, which were then put together in a 2010 anthology. This was the first of several pieces of in-universe Touhou literature. Silent Sinner in Blue, the first official Touhou manga, was published in 2007. Literature continues to be produced, with the latest being the on-going Cheating Detective Satori and Lotus Eaters. In 2025, ZUN released Fossilized Wonders, the 20th game in the series.

ZUN does all the graphics, music, and programming alone for the bullet hell games, with the exceptions of the portrait art in Fairy Wars, which was done by Makoto Hirasaka. The fighting games, Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Touhou Hisōtensoku, Hopeless Masquerade, Urban Legend in Limbo, and Antinomy of Common Flowers, were dual efforts with Twilight Frontier, in which ZUN wrote the music and story, and Twilight Frontier created the art and gameplay. ZUN develops his games with Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, and Cubase, according to his interview in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. ZUN, for the most part, had acknowledged, appreciated, and even encouraged derivative Touhou works by imposing very few restrictions on the use of his works. The major restrictions are on unauthorized commercial distribution as opposed to dōjin, and the spoiling of endings; proper attribution to Team Shanghai Alice is a requirement; creators of derivative works are asked to refrain from crowdfunding their projects. ZUN stated himself that he did not want the Touhou Project series to be officially commercialized.

In interviews, ZUN often stated his intention to re-release Embodiment of Scarlet Devil on Steam, but due to compatibility issues with later Windows releases, the game would move at abnormally high speeds and render it unplayable without fan patches; ZUN stated that he was unable to fix the issue himself, as he had lost the game's source code, making a direct port impossible. In 2017, Hidden Star in Four Seasons became the first Touhou title to be listed on a worldwide digital storefront; by the release of Fossilized Wonders, every mainline Touhou game had been added to Steam with the notable exception of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, Perfect Cherry Blossom, and Imperishable Night. These games had ranked consistently as the top three games of the series by the annual Touhou Popularity Poll; speculation led the fan community to believe the source code had been lost for not just Embodiment, but all three missing games from the storefront.

On June 9, 2026, Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic ~ The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, a remake of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, was announced in the Japanese version of a Nintendo Direct. It is being developed by Shanghai Alice Reprise, a new development team helmed by ZUN and senior developers such as such as Jyunya and Unabara of Twilight Frontier, "dedicated to making Touhou Project games playable on modern platforms". The team's mission is to "make Touhou Project games playable on modern platforms", It will release for PC through Steam, Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, and Playstation 5 on September 9, 2026.

Embodiment of Scarlet Devil: New Classic will be translated into 11 different languages, making it the first time any mainline Touhou title has been localised outside of Japan; New Classic features new enhanced visuals and redrawn sprites of the original game, a re-arranged soundtrack by ZUN, and an infinite lives mode, with an option to toggle to recreate the visuals and soundtrack of the 2002 original.

Design philosophy ZUN has voiced criticism of the video game industry, saying that games have become easier and less mechanically complex when they try to appeal to a wider audience. However, he noted that the dojin game market has allowed for danmaku and other niche genres to still thrive.

ZUN works alone, and each mainline Touhou game was created from the ground up, including the engine. He collaborates with others for spinoff games such as the Touhou fighting games, the first of which was Immaterial and Missing Power, created in 2003 with dojin group Twilight Frontier. In the game's afterword, ZUN mentioned that he disliked having to manage other workers, and that he produced things "six times more comfortably" when doing so alone.

In the addendum of Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost (2023), ZUN lauded the efficiency of generative artificial intelligence (AI) but remarked that "the beasts are the ones building a world of mental enrichment and a palpable sense of life". He referred to the case where the means by which artists create passionately their dojin works, which he calls AI's "opposing symbol of imperfection, organicity, and the importance of 'the process' ...", cannot be comparable to AI works. For the development of Fossilized Wonders, ZUN incorporated images generated by artificial intelligence into the game, a decision some Touhou fans criticized. However, he stated that his reason of using AI generated images had to do with the game's plot, and affirmed a negative stance against generative AI in art.

ZUN has acknowledged that while the Touhou characters have elaborate stories, little detail is given to them in-game, saying that "danmaku is how the story and characters are communicated." Additionally, he has claimed danmaku is meant to be beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, which is also the main reason why the majority of Touhou characters are female. ZUN believes there is a feminine charm to danmaku, which would be lost with male characters, and that the presence of female characters should not be interpreted as fan service.

Video game scholar Angelo Careri wrote that ZUN's musical style features fast melodies with elements of Japanese music and sequences of ornate arpeggiated strings, paired with fast-tempo or percussive rhythms, using low-fidelity virtual instruments dominated by piano and trumpet timbres.

Games

As ZUN Soft TitleGenreSystemRelease dateDeveloper(s)Ref(s)Highly Responsive to PrayersBlock breakerPC-98 ZUN Soft Amusement Makers Story of Eastern WonderlandShoot 'em upPC-98 ZUN Soft Amusement Makers Phantasmagoria of Dim. DreamShoot 'em upPC-98 ZUN Soft Amusement Makers Lotus Land StoryShoot 'em upPC-98 ZUN Soft Amusement Makers Perfect Cherry BlossomShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Imperishable NightShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Immaterial and Missing PowerFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier Phantasmagoria of Flower ViewShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Shoot the BulletShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Mountain of FaithShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Scarlet Weather RhapsodyFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier Subterranean AnimismShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Undefined Fantastic ObjectShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Touhou HisoutensokuFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier Double SpoilerShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Fairy WarsShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Ten DesiresShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Hopeless MasqueradeFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier Double Dealing CharacterShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Impossible Spell CardShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Urban Legend in LimboFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier PlayStation 4: Legacy of Lunatic KingdomShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Hidden Star in Four SeasonsShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Antinomy of Common FlowersFightingMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Twilight Frontier PlayStation 4 Nintendo Switch Violet DetectorShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Wily Beast and Weakest CreatureShoot 'em upMicrosoft Windows Team Shanghai Alice Sunken Fossil WorldBullet hell and platformerMicrosoft WindowsTeam Shanghai Alice

As Shanghai Alice Reprise Title Genre System Release date Developer(s) Ref(s)New Classic ~ The Embodiment of Scarlet Devil Shoot 'em up Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Playstation 5 Shanghai Alice Reprise

Music CDs

ZUN's Music Collection

Artificial Utopia in Ruin (霊長新益京 Reichou Aramashi-kyou; ; 2026-08-15)

Akyu's Untouched Score