Tadashi Yanai and his family are ranked No. 32 on the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list with a net worth of $61.8 billion. He is the founder and president of Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, and the richest person in Japan.
Tadashi Yanai was born on February 7, 1949, in Ube, Yamaguchi, in Japan. He attended Ube High School and graduated from Waseda University in 1971 with a degree in economics and political science.
Net Worth and Rank
- Forbes 2026 list: No. 32, with $61.8 billion, listed as “Tadashi Yanai & family”
- Earlier estimate: as of May 2025, Wikipedia cites Bloomberg at $50.3 billion, making him Japan’s richest person and the 28th-wealthiest in the world
Building Uniqlo
- 1971: he began selling kitchenware and men’s clothing at a JUSCO supermarket; after a year he quit and joined his father’s roadside tailor shop
- 1984: opened the first Uniqlo store in Hiroshima; the name is short for “unique clothing”
- 1991: renamed his father’s company, Ogori Shoji, as Fast Retailing
Yanai has said: “I might look successful, but I’ve made many mistakes. People take their failures too seriously.” In 2019 he stepped down from SoftBank’s board after 18 years as an independent director.
Philanthropy
- 2011: donated 1 billion yen to victims of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami
- 2015: founded the Yanai Tadashi Foundation, which gives full scholarships to Japanese high school students admitted to selective US and UK colleges; as of September 2025, 310 students had received the award
- UCLA and Waseda: he has funded the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, with gifts of $2.5 million in 2014, $25 million in 2020 and $31 million in 2024
Family
He is the son of Kanichi and Hisako Mori Yanai, is married and has two sons, Kazumi and Koji. He lives in Tokyo.
Why It Matters
Uniqlo is one of the best-known clothing brands in Asia, and Yanai’s stake in Fast Retailing is the source of his fortune.
Net worth figures change daily with share prices. Rankings here follow the Forbes 2026 World’s Billionaires list, with wealth measured on March 1, 2026.
Image: Tadashi Yanai, chairman of Uniqlo, meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi, June 25, 2014. Photo: Prime Minister’s Office, Government of India / Wikimedia Commons (GODL-India)
