She was well known in classical music through both CD recordings and public performances, particularly for her interpretations of piano concertos in disguise and transcriptions of well-known masterpieces for chamber ensemble.
She began studying piano in her native Tokyo before the age of four, and when she was six, her family moved to Germany.
Additional training came from international masterclasses with Nikita Magaloff, Yara Bernette, Jeremy Menuhin, Paul Badura-Skoda and Edith Picht-Axenfeld and from the Polish pedagogue Malgorzata Botor-Schreiber.
For the last twenty years, she lived in Hamburg, where she died of breast cancer after a long battle with the disease in January 2017, just about four weeks after her last concert.
Several first prizes at the Young Musician’s Competition, the special prize at the International Schubert Competition in Dortmund in 1989; a scholarship from the Stendal Music Foundation In 1992, a prize (1993) at the International Chopin Competition in Göttingen, a new scholarship (1995) from Deutscher Musikrat (German Music Council, a member of the International Music Council) in Bonn and acceptance into the 40th National Selection of "Concerts by Young Artists" (1996).