Mobile Suit Gundam, created by Yoshiyuki Tomino in 1979, is a popular anime series that helped to popularize the mecha genre of anime, which features giant robots.

The emoji, invented by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, has become a popular form of communication and a ubiquitous feature of modern digital communication.

The Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 and subsequent tsunami devastated Japan's northeast coast and caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster.