Haruki Tsuchiya

Haruki Tsuchiya grew up building radios and devouring detective novels—comfortable with both science and words. At the University of Tokyo he chose mechanical engineering as a major, interested in its breadth. As an unpaid instructor at the university’s Large-Scale Computer Center he taught himself FORTRAN in a week and gained free access to the computers. When his entry in IBM’s student essay competition earned an honorable mention, the prize later opened IBM Japan’s computers to the group at no charge—making CTG’s art possible.

In December 1966 Tsuchiya co-founded the Computer Technique Group with Kohmura, Yamanaka, and Kakizaki, becoming the creator of its most purely algorithmic work. He holds idea and program credits for Kennedy in the Net, Monroe in the Net, Miracle Stones, and March of Polygons. He was also, by his own account, the CTG member who drove the group’s 1969 dissolution, believing CTG had shown everything the medium could then show.

After CTG, Tsuchiya finished his doctorate in 1970 and turned permanently to a career in energy. He became one of Japan’s earliest advocates of renewable energy, co-translated Amory Lovins’s Soft Energy Paths in 1979, and founded the Research Institute for Systems Technology. He developed the concept of an “energy cultivation civilization,” contributed to the 1995 IPCC report, and was inducted into the Kyoto Earth Hall of Fame. An electronic book reader he designed in 1989 reached the market as NEC’s Digital Book in 1993.