As Director of Keio University's Humanities Media Interface Project (HUMI) he has led the digital documentation, facsimile reproduction, and distribution of many medieval books and manuscripts including the Gutenberg Bible and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Takamiya was born in Tokyo in 1944, but his family relocated to Hokkaido due to the war.
Under Takamiya's direction, the HUMI team at Keio University has made digital reproductions of sixteen sets of the Gutenberg Bible at seven institutions, including in 2000, both full-text facsimiles held in the collection of the British Library.
[3][4] The high resolution images have facilitated comparative bibliographical research on early movable type printing methods and are available for public access on the respective library websites.
In 2013, Takamiya deposited on longterm loan his private collection of rare medieval books and manuscripts at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.