Born in Kawagoe, a historical city known as "Little Edo". After graduating from the Department of Sociology at Tokyo University, I had an experience to stay with my husband, a cultural anthropologist, in one of the islands of New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) in Melanesia and then spent a few years in Cambridge UK, where I have fine-tuned skills of housekeeping as the mother of four children. Based on the experiences over the years there, I established the Oxford University Exchange Program for Japanese and Asian women after returning to Japan. In 1992, I opened Japan's first interior mart, the Tokyo Design Center, which has become a Mecca for interior designing and a concentrated trove of well-known interior brands. The Tokyo Design Center works hard for the revitalization of Japan's architectural and design fields, consistently hosting a wide range of cultural events such as design exhibitions, seminars, and symposiums. In 1994 I was appointed as a member of the G-Mark Selection Jury and have served on selection committees for design awards, both domestically and internationally, for various design products. Since becoming managing director of the Japan Design Consultants Association (established in 1996), I have been involved in the innovation and revitalization of Japnese local industries. http://www.design-center.co.jp; http://www.design-consul.net