• English / United States: Junichi Masuda
• Japanese / Japan: 増田順一
• Japanese (Romanized) / Japan: Jun'ichi Masuda
• Japanese (Trans) / Japan: Junichi Masuda

Junichi Masuda was born on January 12th, 1968 in Kanagawa, Japan. He is a Video Game Director, Game Designer, Programmer, Music Designer and does Sound Effects work. He works for GameFreak, the company that makes the main Pokémon games. Junichi Masuda was born in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture in 1968. He began his career at GAME FREAK Inc. in 1989. As one of the founding members of GAME FREAK Inc. in 1989, he has since been involved in the development of all video game titles developed by the company, including the Pokémon series.

Masuda currently serves as Executive Director & Head of Development at GAME FREAK Inc. Masuda is the director for Pokémon X and Pokémon Y for the Nintendo 3DS system. Along with his main responsibility as a game director, he also works in a wide range of areas including game design, music composition and scenario writing. Masuda is a graduate of Japan Electronics College.

He often makes appearances on the Pokémon series Pokémon Smash and Pokémon Sunday to announce new events and games. His appearances are always glorified by the cast members as they are always excited to have a person so directly connected to the franchise on the show.

Masuda is also keyboardist in the group MTM (Mystery Thunder Mask) which also includes Misaki Momose, Shinji Miyazaki and Akihito Toda. He composed the song Battle Gene M (バトル遺伝子Ｍ) which is based of the Pocket Monsters Black and White background music track Battle! Shirona (戦闘！シロナ), track 50 on CD #3 of the soundtrack. Shinji Miyazaki arranged the song that Masuda had written for the MTM performances though.

His blog called the "HIDDEN POWER of masuda Director's Columns" is available in Japanese but he also posts some of his news in an English section. Often he gives little insights from the series that otherwise wouldn't have been known as well as announcing his appearances.