[4] He returned to Japan and served his order as formator, vice prefect of novices, and vocations director for a year and then as its provincial councilor from 1994 to 1999, taking on several additional roles.

[3] He served as executive director of Caritas Japan from 1999 to 2004, after first gaining experience with that organization as a volunteer in the refugee camp in Bukavu (then in Zaire, now in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) in the 1990s.

[3] He received his episcopal consecration on 20 September[2] at the Salle de Seishin Girls' High School in Niigata from Archbishop Peter Takeo Okada of Tokyo, with Bishops Rafael Masahiro Umemura of Yokohama and Marcellino Taiji Tani of Saitama as co-consecrators.

[6] He attended the beatification for Takayama Ukon in Osaka in 2017 and proposed the late samurai as "a model for all" since he had "renounced privileges and wealth for the faith".

[9] In the summer of 2021, when Japan had declared its fourth state of emergency because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kikuchi canceled plans for his parishes to provide services to participants and support staff of the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.

[15] Kikuchi has been a staunch advocate for dialogue in relation to North Korea's nuclear program and their diplomatic crisis with the United States of America.

In August 2017 he expressed his hope that the Japanese government would undertake "an initiative of dialogue that involves all the sides concerned in this crisis to find a diplomatic solution".

[17] Kikuchi is a strong advocate of environmental protection and wrote a piece for Asia News in support of the pope's encyclical Laudato si'.

The book was promoted by the Catholic HIV/AIDS Desk, an organization that, with the support of the Japanese Episcopal Conference, provides health information and fights anti-LGBT discrimination.