| Representative |
Koichiro Kuraoka
He spent 15 years at a video game company, where he began his career as a programmer. While working on the development of content for home video game consoles and smartphones, he expanded his responsibilities to include planning and management. After working on the development of motion capture support software at a major Japanese CG production company, he co-founded MuuMu—a software development company specializing in VR, AR, and MR—with co-CEO Kawaguchi in 2017. The company has developed numerous XR projects, including “MR Amakusa Shiro (Shimabara Castle),” “Gunkanjima MR (Gunkanjima Digital Museum),” and “Immersive Suspense: The Enoshima Serial Murders.” |
| Main Achievements |
2026: Selected for the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications’ ICT Startup League
2026: Received the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Challenge Award at the “Mirai Enterprise Nagasaki” event hosted by Nagasaki Prefecture
2025: “Detecle” implemented at the Osaka-Kansai Expo (Nagasaki Prefecture)
2023: Launched “Detecle,” an AR live-action video service
2018: Selected as the representative company for Nagasaki Prefecture at the Kyushu-Yamaguchi Venture Market 2018 and presented at the event
2017: Founded MuuMu Inc. |
| Childhood Dream |
My dream was to become a game developer. I loved seeing my friends play the games I’d created—filled with the creative expressions and fun I’d envisioned—and watching them get excited right before my eyes. That made me want to share this joy with even more people. |
| Influential People, Things, and Events |
▼Person: “Father”
My family’s business was a local metalworking shop. My father would weld pieces of metal together to build structures—he even built our home’s storage shed and office all by himself. Even as a child, I believed that with the right skills and tools, you could make anything. There was even a time when a desk from my school was brought to the shop, and my father fixed it. Whenever I walk through town, people stop me to say, “You made this for me” or “You fixed that for me.” The things I made with my own hands are used just as they are in the town and in people’s daily lives. I feel that this sense of connection ties directly to my own work—combining technology to create services and deliver them to society.
▼Object: “Virtua Fighter”
Back in the days when 2D fighting games were the only option, I was blown away by the 3DCG I saw for the first time at an arcade. The characters were displayed large on screen, and the computer performed 3D calculations to render them in real time. Astonished by the technology and visuals, I rushed home, grabbed all my savings, and returned to play it obsessively. I feel that sense of wonder was the starting point that led me to visual expression and, later, to XR. |
| Motivation, Goals, and Ideal World |
When I first got my hands on a computer and had my friends play a game I’d created myself, I was so happy to see how much they enjoyed it that I decided to pursue a career in game development. Over the course of 15 years working in the game industry, I came to want to deliver fun and excitement not just to gamers, but to a much wider audience. I wanted to create and deliver these experiences directly with my own hands. That was the catalyst for starting my own company.
At the same time, there was something I’d always felt: because games are confined to the boundaries of a display, there are limits to their expressiveness and the sense of immersion they can provide. That’s precisely why I was so drawn to the worlds of VR, AR, and MR—which allow for expression beyond the confines of a screen—and why I founded a company in this field.
The idea for “Detecle” was born from the difficulty of expressing everything through CG alone. Conveying even subtle emotions through CG is much harder than one might imagine. So I thought: if we use live-action video in AR, wouldn’t we be able to convey not just emotions, but also a sense of hospitality?
Two sets of feedback from the field gave me the push I needed. One came from local government officials, who faced the challenge of “tourists visiting, but not being able to fully convey the region’s charm due to a lack of staff.” The other came from my own experience: when visiting a museum, I couldn’t fully appreciate the exhibits or enjoy them without prior knowledge. I felt that if a curator were there to explain things to me, the experience would be so much richer.
In the near future, a world where AR glasses are commonplace will arrive. When that happens, a person will appear right before your eyes, transcending language barriers to convey what you want to say to the people you want to reach. I want to create a world where warmth can be felt even when there are few people around. Believing in the potential of AR videos—which go beyond short videos—I’m taking on the world as a Japanese pioneer. |
Media Produced by ASCII STARTUP
