Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi Nakamoto is the founder of Bitcoin and initial author of the Original Bitcoin client. He is said in a p2p foundation profile[1] that he is from Japan. Beyond that, not much is known about him.
Possible Motives
He left some clues about why he is doing this project when he include the following text in the Genesis block, "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".
Possible identity
Doubts are casted on his identity and/or nationality. While the few informations available[1] about him point to Japan, he never wrote a single line of Japanese, the Bitcoin client has no Japanese version and there is no Japanese page on bitcoin.org.