I was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. My artistic education started at age eighteen when I began to study drawing and painting from a professional artist in Kyoto. This was parallel to my study of literature at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Then I moved to the United States to study art history and painting. First, I studied art history at the University of Oregon. Then I received a M.F.A. in painting from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Currently I am a self-supported artist.

In the past I enjoyed teaching in two institutions. One as a full-time instructor and the other as an adjunct. I was a full-time faculty member in the Department of Art at Lane Community College in Eugene until 2016. I also taught as an adjunct instructor for two oversea summer programs offered by the University of Oregon. I founded the Siena Art Program in the Department of Art at the University of Oregon in 1996 and was the director of this summer program for eight years. During the summer from 2005 to 2014, I was a visiting instructor, teaching media in the Kyoto Study Abroad Program of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of Oregon.

Natural environments I have experience in the United States, especially in the Northwest, and in Europe, have been powerful artistic sources for me for many years. At the same time, my artistic, cultural and emotional ties to Japan remain solid. Indeed, my recent main mediums are sumi ink and watercolor which goes back to my heritage.

We experience a constant climate disaster in the world. My current artistic inquiry has a lot to do with our relationship to the natural environment, which is out of balance. In the Northwest, the threats in the environment, especially forest fires are becoming more and more devastating and unfortunately becomes such a big part of our life. In my work, I cannot help contrasting between the vast and pristine nature and destructive disasters in the forests.

In addition to my individual work, I also enjoy collaboration with a musician. One of my current projects is to do improvisational paintings according to impromptu music created by my collaborator in the theme of the environment. The process of my spontaneous paintings to the music is video taped and edited.