December 2, 2022
On this date in 1990, Toyohiro Akiyama became the first person from Japan to fly in space, the first civilian aboard a commercially funded spaceflight, and the first journalist to report from space. Akiyama was a TV journalist with the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) at the time. It was TBS that sponsored his flight for an amount reportedly somewhere between 25-37 million US dollars.
Astronaut Toyohiro Akiyama. Image credit: NASA archives