Named in honor of Tesuyasu Mitani, discoverer of (1619) Ueta and independent recoverer of periodic comet Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušaková in 1954. He worked at Ikoma-san Solar Observatory of Kyoto Imperial University during 1944–1945 and under the difficult conditions following World War II he enthusiastically made astrometric observations of Pluto, comets and minor planets at Kyoto University’s Kwasan Observatory. From 1957 to 1960 he was engaged in occultation observations for the geodetic survey (U.S. Army Map Service, Far East). (M 15426) _ _.