is a Japanese entrepreneur who founded Livedoor, a website design operation that grew into a popular internet portal. After being arrested and charged with securities fraud in 2006, he severed all connections with the company. His trial began on September 4, 2006. On March 16, 2007, Horie was sentenced to imprisonment of 2 years and 6 months. He is popularly known as due to his resemblance to Doraemon, the chubby robot cat in a popular Japanese cartoon. The name Horiemon was also given to a racehorse he owned, after the name had been chosen by voting on a Livedoor website. Early life Horie was born in Yame, Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan, and was raised in a respected household by a corporate father and mother from a farming landlord family. He was a student at the department of literature at the University of Tokyo and was going to major in religion, but dropped out after establishing a company called Livin' on the Edge in 1995 with friends and classmates, which became the precursor to Livedoor. Business career In 2004, Horie tried to buy the Kintetsu Buffaloes baseball team. The team rejected the offer, but the incident put him in the national spotlight. Horie was criticized by conservative business circles in Japan for his unconventional manner – everything from his informal attire to the practice of corporate expansion through hostile takeover. In 2005, Horie founded Interstellar Technologies rocket company. Horie unveiled a plan for space tourism at the 56th International Astronautical Congress in Fukuoka in 2005. The spacecraft he planned to develop was based on the design of the Russian TKS spacecraft. Horie said that he planned to invest in space development and that he wanted to launch a manned rocket within five years. The project was called "Japan Space Dream – A Takafumi Horie Project". As a business owner of wagyu-promoting organization and a writer of food-related books, Horie has been known for his several remarks against veganism and vegetarianism where he commented on his Twitter as I don't want to see the world being turned into somewhere we can't eat delicious meats because of these people, and I will crush them thoroughly., triggering further controversies. Political career Horie announced on August 19, 2005, that he would run in the snap 2005 general election as an independent in the Hiroshima sixth district. He contemplated running as an official LDP candidate against LDP