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| Mao Zedong |  Founder and first paramount leader of the People's Republic of China |
| Hua Goufeng | Creator of the "Two Whatever's" doctrine and immediate successor to Mao, later ousted by Deng Xiaoping |
| Syngman Rhee | First president of the Korean Provisional Government in exile and first president of the Republic of Korea |
| Kim Il Sung | First chairman of the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, father of Kim Jung Il |
| Kim Jung Il | Son of Kim Il Sung and second paramount leader of North Korea |
| Hu Jintao | Fifth paramount leader of the People's Republic of China and successor of Jiang Zemin |
| Wen Jibao | The fourth generation premier of the People's Republic of China |
| Kim Okkyun | A Korean patriot and terrorist assassinated by Syngman Rhee's henchmen under mysterious circumstances |
| Wang Yangming | A controversial neo-Confucian master who taught his disciples to follow their intuition |
| Zhou Enlai | Longstanding premier of the People's Republic of China, a survivor of the Maoist era; died of cancer just before Mao |
| Jiang Zemin | Fourth Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China; the core of the third generation leadership of the PRC |
| Ito Hirobumi | The first prime minister of Japan; later assassinated by a Korean nationalist |
| Emperor Hirohito (the Showa Emperor) | The Japanese emperor who presided over World War II |
| Emperor Meiji | The Japanese emperor who served as the figurehead of the Japanese modernization movement |
| Hideki Tojo | The unrepentant military man and prime minister of Japan during World War II; was sentenced to death by hanging by the Allies |
| Deng Xiaoping | The third Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China; set China on a pragmatic course of economic development that turned China into an economic superpower |
| Lin Biao | One of Mao's closest confidants; later tried to kill Mao but failed; died in a plane crash over Mongolia |
| Hara Takashi | The first commoner to become prime minister of Japan |
| King Kojong | The last monarch of the Choson dynasty |
| Puyi | The last emperor of China |
| Sun Yat-sen | The founder of the Chinese nationalist party |
| Lu Xun | The beloved Chinese author who criticized traditional China through such classics as "The Diary of a Madman" and "Ah Q" |
| Kita Ikki | A cocain addict who hated Japanese modernization and wrote that Japan should return to its roots, adopting the samurai as the guardians of the people |
| Oda Nobunaga | A Japanese warlord who tried to unite Japan under his rule, but failed |
| Tokugawa Ieyasu | The first shogun of Japan |
| Toyotomi Hideyoshi | The predecessor of Tokugawa; succeeded Nobunaga Oda and laid the foundations of the Tokugawa shogunate |
| Confucius | A moral philosopher who advocated submission and proper relationships in order to achieve peace and harmony |
| Isoroku Yamamoto | Chief Japanese admiral during World War II; masterminded the Pearl Harbor attack |
| Jiang Qing | Wife of Mao Zedong and leader of the Gang of Four |
| Chiang Kai-shek | Principal ruler of Nationalist China and mortal enemy of Mao Zedong |
| Hu Yaobang | A top leader of China during the Deng period; died under suspicious circumstances in disgrace for being too radical a reformer |
| Zhao Ziyang | Successor of Hu Yaobang as Premier; a reformer who was ousted for being too favorably toward the protestors of Tiananmen Square |
| Park Chung Hee | A military dictator of South Korea who got the economy rolling |
| Chun Doo Hwan | A South Korean dictator, successor of Park Chung Hee; responsible for the Gwangju massacre |
| Kim Dae Jung | An important opposition South Korean politician who opposed Park Chung Hee almost at the cost of his life; after the democratic reforms, he eventually became president |
| Shigeru Yoshida | First prime minister of Japan after World War II |
| Hong Xiuquan | Leader of the Taiping cult |
| Lin Zexu | A Qing commissioner sent by the emperor to stop the opium trade |
| Empress Cixi | The dowager empress who encouraged and promoted the Boxer rebellion |