Takehiro Kakiyama
Tak (@hirrro) is the founder of Flutterscape, a personalized e-commerce site that lets users all over the world recommend and buy products from Japan. Singtel called it one of Asia’s Top 10 Apps. When he’s not working on his company, you might find him on a golf course, or snowboarding, or shopping. He’s a deep thinker and good listener; a fun guy to sit next to at a dinner party. Tak went to high school in Canada and graduated from Sophia University in 2010.
Eri Kikunaga
Eri is the founder of Chrysmela, a manufacturer of clasps for pierced earrings. She got the idea after she realized that lost earrings were a source of great anxiety for more than 70% of earring wearers. Today, her “Chrysmela catch” is sold in over 600 stores across Japan. In 2010, she was awarded the Japan Groundbreakers Award for being an outstanding entrepreneurial woman.
Emi Kusano
The youngest of the group, Emi (@gyorome)–a21-year old Tokyo native–has been a professional photographer since high school, orchestrating Japanese fashion shoots for overseas publications and local magazines. Some of her work has been displayed at the Museum of FIT in New York City. This year, she founded her own company, Kwl-E, a platform to promote design thinking in Japan.
Ami Miura
When Ami (@Nadu_King) entered college, she abandoned her earlier aspirations to become an opera musician to start a school for TOEIC takers. She sold her company in 2008 and traveled to 30 countries before returning to Japan, where she met Mohammed Yunus and was inspired by his efforts to start a microfinance club in Japan. Ami is a fearless entrepreneur working in a Japanese company who has the unique opportunity to initiate change from within a corporate setting.
Kohei Nishiyama
There’s a reason Fast Company called Kohei (@koheinishiyama) one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2009–in the late 90s, he founded Elephant Design, a company that would commercialize his design-to-order system, a way of crowdsourcing product development that has been adopted by companies like MUJI and LEGO. The former McKinsey consultant was raised in South America and is a graduate of University of Tokyo and the Kuwasawa Design School. He is also the founder of Cuusoo.com.
Junto Ohki
Junto (@juntoohki) is the co-founder and president of ShuR Group, the company behind a technology that combines aspects of social media and social enterprise to create the first sign language dictionary in the world, called SLinto. Junto went to high school in the United States and got his BA from Keio University earlier this year. He is also the winner of our Mixi online video contest.
Satoshi Suzuki
Satoshi (@Doubles9124) is the founder and president of Wondershake, a new and buzzworthy location-based social network that identifies people with similar interests in one’s vicinity. He has lived in Nigeria, London, and San Diego. This summer, he and four of his team members moved to San Francisco to try their hand at the US market. Say tuned to see how they fare on the left coast!
Novmichi Tosa
Novmichi (@MaywaDenki) is the president of Maywa Denki, a Tokyo-based art collective whose quirky instruments have made waves among musically inclined geeks and artists across the globe. Most of Maywa Denki’s creations are sold on their web site and through online retailers like Amazon Japan. He also holds regular robot-making workshops at his studio in Tokyo and does musical performances featuring kooky instruments and silly robots in Paris, Osaka, and LA.
Riyo Yoshioka
Riyo (@riyoyoshioka) is one of the founding members of the Tokyo office of Human Rights Watch. A former research analyst at Goldman Sachs who also worked at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to improve the situation of asylum seekers coming to Japan. Through her work, she aims to make Japan a leader in human rights diplomacy, to encourage more people to take non-profit jobs, and to empower Japanese civil society.