Capcom’s first game localization operation was Tom Shiraiwa as a one-man show

For most, Takuya “Tom” Shiraiwa might not be the first person that comes to mind when talking about Capcom's early days, but he was their one-man localization army, enabling a generation to experience many of their games worldwide. As one of the first to pioneer English adaptations for many of the company’s arcade and console games, he often handled the entire weight of localizing Japanese kanji into English text in 1990.

Takuya “Tom” Shiraiwa recently sat down for an interview with Time Extension and reminisced about his early days at Capcom. He had just graduated when he started working in sales and quickly became the go-to English speaker at the company because no one else fit the bill.

Later, he joined Capcom full-time and was completely occupied with selling arcade boards overseas. According to Shiraiwa, “There was no such word as ‘localization’ at the time. They were just calling it ‘text translation.’ There wasn’t a localization department either. It was just me. So, one guy.”

He handled everything from exporting arcade boards to communicating with U.S. subsidiaries and relaying their feedback. Over time, his role became increasingly important, a surprise to Shiraiwa himself.

Shiraiwa essentially became the key mediator between Capcom’s Japanese and overseas offices. He was heavily involved in and concerned about whether games would be a hit or a miss in the West. For context, a former Capcom USA employee recalled that Shiraiwa once pulled him into a separate room, looking quite concerned, before Street Fighter III was released.

The Capcom employee said, “A month or two before I left Capcom, localization manager Tom Shiraiwa took me into a room, locked the door, and showed me a tape of Street Fighter III test animation… He said, ‘What do you think? Will this be successful in the U.S.?’

These days, Capcom’s localization process looks entirely different. It’s a far cry from Shiraiwa’s DIY beginnings. In a 2022 interview with the company’s localization team, localization director Andrew, who has worked on titles such as Monster Hunter World described how the company has taken a more cohesive and integrated approach, stating, “Localization directors like me join the team in a project’s early stages, so we move our workstations to where the team is located and stay there until the project is over.”

Shiraiwa finally left Capcom in 2004 after being overworked and feeling inadequately compensated, and went on to work for Square Enix.