"In the history of humankind, the first Asian husband of someone who has been into space."
Claiming that being "an astronaut's husband" is the most important of all his titles, this is how 54-year-old Makio Mukai, an associate professor in the pathological diagnosis department at Keio University's faculty of medicine and a doctor at Keio University Hospital, describes himself.
His wife, astronaut and cardiac surgeon Chiaki Mukai, made two trips into outer space in 1994 and 1998, aboard the space shuttles Columbia and Discovery.