Note: Read the section on Kawada for an interesting tidbit about RVD, and the section on Tsuruta for an interesting fact about Ric Flair. In case you've never heard of Misawa or Kobashi, their matches with Samoa Joe are mentioned.
Kenta Kobashi.
Competed in AJPW from 88-2000, he was known as one of the Four Corners of Heaven alongside Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue for the amazing qualiy of his matches. He has had 24 five-star matches in his career, according to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. WWE has had four. He was a three-time AJPW champ, I believe, and embarked on an amazing two-year title reign in NOAH, a new Japanese promotion that was created in 2000. His bouts with Jun Akiyama and his one match with Mitsuharu Misawa for the title in 2003 are the best matches of this decade. Ric Flair has called him and Misawa the greatest wrestlers of all time.
He named and popularised the Burning Hammer (inverted Death Valley Bomb, or inverted Death Valley Driver as you may know it). This move has only been used on Misawa and Akiyama, as it is one of the most dangerous moves of all time. A wrist-clutch side DVD, knwon as the Wrist-clutch Burning Hammer, was used on his protoge KENTA, as well as Akira Taue. He is famous for the stiffness of his chops, and a prominent spot in his five-star match with current TNA champ Samoa Joe (whom he defeated- this was in ROH in 2005) featured him giving Joe about seventy stiff chops in the corner. He is simply one of the most intense wrestlers of all time. The only hindrance to his style is the fact that he has very bad knees, and had to have numerous surgeries done on them. Recently, he returned to NOAH after a battle with cancer.
I'll do my second favourite Japanese guy, Toshiaki Kawada, if you don't mind:
Kawada is affectionately known as Dangerous K, and with good reason. His moveset includes a stiff brainbuster, backdrop driver that plants the opponent right on his neck, a dragon-sleeper like stretch applied on the neck, numerous stiff kick variations that could quite easily legitimately knock someone out, and one of the most dangerous moves ever, the Kawada Driver, a kneeling Ganso Bomb. Aside from being amazingly stiff (interestling fact- RVD once wrestled him in AJPW in the early 90s. Kawada didn't like RVD's flashy style and spot-monkey antics, and so Kawada legitimately beat the **** out of him), Kawada is amazingly tough, wrestling over fifteen minutes after breaking his arm on the back of an opponent's head in a match. In fact, that was how the Kawada Driver was invented- Kawada was unable to get Misawa all they way up for a powerbomb due to the arm, and decided to just plant him on his head instead.
Kawada has had over 15 five-star matches, including a one-hour classic with Kobashi that Dave Meltzer described as the greatest sixty-minute match ever. His feud with Misawa is a 1990s Japanese version of the Flair/Steamboat feud, with the 1994 match between the two being considered by many to be the greatest match ever. More recently, he had a few good matches with Japanese legend Keji Mutoh (The Great Muta), who is the only man to take the Driver aside from Misawa. I'm not really qualified to go into details regarding Kawada's feud with Misawa, but it is, in many ways, what defined his career in AJPW, and is simply the greatest in-ring rivalry ever.
Jumbo Tsuruta, Mitsuharu Misawa
Tsuruta was very important in creating AJPW's general wrestling style, known as King's Road. I don't know how well-known a fact this is even to Tsuruta fans, but Tsuruta actually wrestled a match in 1982 with the most important world champion of the day, a man by the name of Ric Flair (you may have potentially heard this guy's name dropped once or twice, I don't know), and he actually pinned Flair with the belt on the line. He got him in a German Suplex hold, but Flair shifted his weight and allowed himself to pin Tsuruta's shoulders to the mat at the same time, resulting in a draw and Flair retaining the gold. Tsuruta was rather annoyed, to say the least.
Anyway, I bring up Tsuruta, like I said, due to his importance to this wrestling paradise that was AJPW. He was regarded by many as the greatest wrestler of all time, and he still is today by a few fans on this site. AmDrag might be able to tell you a bit more about him, but his matches with Misawa, including a five-star one in which he put Misawa over, helped establish Misawa as the next cornerstone of the promotion.
Misawa started wrestling as Tiger Mask II (he's the man in my avatar). He initially teamed with Kawada, and had a stable that included the rookie Kobashi, so that he could feud with Tsuruta's stable. Kawada was actually the man who unmasked Misawa publicly when Misawa asked him to. Anyway, I've already hyped up the Kawada/Misawa feud enough, so I'll mention that AJPW had the greatet tag matches of all time, many of which were Misawa and Kawada vs. Tsuruta and Taue, and, later, Misawa and Kobashi vs. Kawada and Taue.
Misawa is known as having the stiffest elbow strikes in the history of the business. When he was wrestling alongside Kawada, he climbed to the top rope and came off with an elbow strike which knocked his opponent out cold and resulted in the match ending prematurely. If you look up "Misawa Elbow Replay" on Youtube, you can see just how real his elbow smashes are. He is also the innovator of the Tiger Suplex 85 (I believe, anyway), and such moves as the Tiger Driver 91 as well as the Emerald Flowison (often mispronounced as Emerald Frosion or Emerald Fusion) and its many variations.
Misawa is probably the longest-reigning champion in NOAH history, all up. He won the vast majority of the classic matches vs. Kawada and Kobashi, and believes he is still is the biggest thing in puroresu, though the likes of Kobashi have obviously surpassed him this decade. Kobashi won the title off him in 2003 to start the two-year reign, and his (Misawa's) latest reign was ended in March by Takeshi Morishima, the former ROH champion. In 2007, Misawa defeated Samoa Joe as well.
"Quite popular in Japan"
Lol. That's an understatement. From what I understand, Great Muta's a national icon in Japan.
I wasn't trying to take a shot at you. I apologise if you feel that way.