History’s 100 Most Influential People: Hero Edition (Video)

Attention visitors: In addition to this post, you may want to check out two similar posts from 2006:

• Japanese rank their favorite 100 historical figures (a more general non-hero list)
• The Japanese people rank their favorite 100 female historical figures (ladies only)

Last night a new Top 100 historical figure list show, “Histories 100 Most Influential people: Hero Edition,” aired on NTV. Here is the full list of results, as selected by a national survey.

1. Sakamoto Ryoma
2. Napoleon I
3. Oda Nobunaga
4. Saigo Takamori
5. Miyamoto no Yoshitsune
6. Jean of Arc
7. Hideyoshi Toyotomi
8. Albert Einstein
9. Yutaka Ozaki
10. Akechi Mitsuhide
11. Genghis Khan
12. Tokugaya Ieyasu
13. Thomas Edison
14. Florence Nightengale
15. Chiune Sugihara
16. Kyu Sakamoto
17. Hijikata Toshizo
18. Rikidozan
19. Yoshida Shoin
20. Mahatma Gandhi
21. Prince Shotoku
22. George Washington
23. Sanada Yukimura
24. Mother Teresa
25. Yujiro Ishihara
26. Kakuei Tanaka
27. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
28. Abraham Lincoln
29. Oishi Yoshio
30. Okita Soji
31. Christopher Columbus
32. Admiral Togo Heihachiro
33. Martin Luther King Jr.
34. Andy Hug
35. Amakusa Shiro
36. Hideyo Noguchi
37. Bruce Lee
38. Leonardo da Vinci
39. Abe no Seimei
40. Walt Disney
41. Kondo Isami
42. Date Masamune
43. Akira Kurosawa
44. Julius Caesar
45. Chosuke Ikariya
46. Audrey Hepburn
47. Liu Bei
48. Ryunosuke Akutagawa
49. John Lennon
50. Takasugi Shinsaku
51. Naomi Uemura
52. Freddy Mercury
53. Isoroku Yamamoto
54. Osamu Tezuka
55. Ninomiya Sontoku
56. Charlie Chaplin
57. Diana, Princess of Wales
58. Ludwig van Beethoven
59. Ryotaro Shiba
60. Pablo Picasso
61. John F Kennedy
62. Yuri Gagarin
63. “Giant” Baba
64. Kong Ming
65. Anne Frank
66. Daijiro Kato
67. Cao Cao
68. Tokugawa Yoshimune
69. Arthur Conan Doyle
70. Elvis Presley
71. Galileo Galilei
72. Queen Himiko
73. Yusaku Matsuda
74. Pierre and Marie Curie
75. Ferdinand Magellan
76. James Dean
77. Yukio Mishima
78. Taira no Masakado
79. Hokusai
80. Sen no Rikyu
81. Kiyoshi Atsumi
82. Federic Chopin
83. Babe Ruth
84. Sun Yat-sen
85. Ayrton Senna
86. Takanohana Koji
87. William Shakespeare
88. Shirasu Jiro
89. Taira no Kiyomori
90. Eisaku Sato
91. The Wright Brothers
92. Stanely Kubrick
93. Theodore Roosevelt
94. Hiraga Gennai
95. Miyamoto Musashi
96. Eiji Tsuburaya
97. Abebe Bikila
98. Eiji Sawamura
99. Isaac Newton
100. Matthew Calbraith Perry

As in their previous historical figure listing shows, NTV had popular celebrities play the role of their favorite historical people who made the list. Here’s foreign “talento” Thane Camus playing Columbus (ranked 31):

Christopher Columbus was obsessed with sailing to Asia and often mentioned the riches of Japan. In this clip, Thane goes a bit further by proclaiming to his sailors that foreigners who come to Japan are popular with the women and can become TV celebrities. As the sailors cheer, text on the screen tells us that all the sailors are foreign “talento” for Japanese TV shows.

Another cool celebrity appearance was Mongolian sumo grand champion Asashoryu as Genghis Khan (ranked 11). Pretty cool moustache, Asa.

Update: A couple more clips from the show
Clip 1: Jean of Arc gets a message from God and later uses her divine knowledge to save a French soldier from a cannonball (fantastic special effects!):

Clip 2: Nobunaga, played by boxer Koki Kameda, demonstrates the effectiveness of longer spears and guns:

Not surprisingly, two of the top 3 results are the same as a similar list from an earlier NTV historical figure ranking show I translated back in May 2006. They also ran a top 100 historical women list show in September, which I also posted the results for. It’s interesting to see how the lists vary in their make-up, and how individuals such as the founders of Japanese Buddhist sects, are missing from the lists, while Jesus made one list. One could argue that NTV “cleaned up” their lists to be more politically correct, something that wouldn’t be too far out of place when other networks are facing accusations of faking/staging television programs.