Makoto Nagao
Makoto Nagao connected natural language processing, machine translation, Japanese text analysis, and digital libraries with image-processing research. In the MU project, he helped develop a transfer-model system for scientific and technical abstracts in English and Japanese, and proposed example-based translation using past examples by analogy. He moved from engineering study and a Kyoto University professorship to the university presidency, then led the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and served as Librarian of the National Diet Library. His honors included the IAPR Fellowship, ACL Lifetime Achievement Award, and 2005 Japan Prize; he died in 2021.
- Works
- 217
- Citations
- 3,770
- h-index
- 26
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1936–1973
An engineer studies language
Born in 1936, he graduated from Kyoto University's Department of Electronic Engineering in 1959, continued graduate study there until 1961, and joined the university as an assistant professor. He became a professor of engineering at Kyoto University in 1973.
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1982–1984
Serving pattern recognition
From 1982 to 1984, he served as IAPR's second vice president.
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1982–1986
Translating scientific abstracts
In the MU project, Nagao helped develop a transfer-model system that translated scientific and technical abstracts between English and Japanese. He proposed example-based machine translation, using earlier translations as analogies for new sentences.
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1990s
Parsing Japanese text
In the early 1990s, he developed JUAMN, a Japanese morphological analyzer that combined word segmentation and morphological analysis for text whose orthography did not reliably mark word boundaries.
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1991–1995
From translation to libraries
He helped establish the International Association for Machine Translation in 1991 and served as its first president; he founded Japan's Association for Natural Language Processing in 1994. His Ariadne prototype was among the earliest digital-library systems and joined natural-language and image-processing technologies. In 1995, he coauthored a paper with six collaborators on Ariadne's system design.
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1994–2005
Recognition across fields
The IAPR named him a Fellow in 1994 for contributions to image analysis and recognition. The ACL awarded him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003, and the Japan Prize recognized his work in natural language processing and intelligent image processing in 2005.
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1997–2012
Leading public institutions
He served as Kyoto University's 23rd president from December 1997 to December 2003 and chaired the Japan Association of National Universities from 2001 to 2003. His later posts included founding director of the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (2004–2007) and Librarian of the National Diet Library (2007–2012).
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May 2021
A life in research
Nagao died in May 2021.
Sources and credits
Photo: 日本学士院, via Wikimedia Commons. License: CC BY 4.0. Source: commons.wikimedia.org. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.
