<p>The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of Japanese and Korean cultural background on the entrepreneurial intentions of graduate students majoring in natural science fields. We surveyed 298 graduate students from two Japanese and two Korean universities and used a variation of the Theory of Planned Behavior to analyze the effect of various factors on respondents’ intentions to launch a startup in the future. We found that attitude had a positive impact on Japanese graduate students’ entrepreneurial intentions, while attitude and the personality trait of innovation had a positive impact on Korean graduate students’ entrepreneurial intentions. Our results suggest that university entrepreneurship education does not influence graduate students' entrepreneurial intentions in either Japan or Korea, pointing to a need for more effective entrepreneurship education for graduate students in the natural sciences. Based on the results of this study, we propose measures that would make entrepreneurship education more effective in Japan and Korea by taking attitude, personality traits, and cultural factors into account.</p>