Professor Emeritus, National Institute of Informatics.
Research Fellow (visiting,) Toyo Bunko.
Born in northeastern China (Shen-Yang) in 1939. Came back to Japan in 1946 and grew up in a small town in Southern Kyushu. Educated at the University of Tokyo (BSc 1962, MSc 1964, PhD 1967, all in chemistry.) Taught chemistry at the alma mater (1967-1972 Joshu/assistant professor at Dept. of Chemistry, Univ. of Tokyo, 1967-1969 postdoctoral research associate at Dept. of Chemistry, UNC at Chapel Hill.)
Interested in on-line databases in the late 1960's and started to develop information retrieval systems, migrating to computer science and information systems field. 1972-1981 associate professor at the Computer Centre, University of Tokyo (now Information Technology Center), which was to become, in the late 1970's and early 1980's, one of the largest inter-university computer centers in the world. There, developed and started, in 1975, the first large-scale on-line database service in Japan, TOOL-IR, and managed the service until 1981.
Other interests while at the Computer Centre include interactive (rather than punch-card oriented) use of computers, man-machine interface (later name: human interface,) software packages, DBMS (on the editorial advisory board of Transactions on Database Systems [TODS] for several years since its start in 1975.)
While at the Computer Centre, was involved in the creation of the University of Library and Information Science (ULIS, now part of University of Tsukuba) at Tsukuba, Japan. 1981-2001 professor at ULIS, except being its vice president in 1995-1999. While at ULIS, worked with others in the research and development of shared-cataloguing systems for Japanese libraries and in the establishment of information systems studies in the country, being for several years Japanese representative to IFIP/TC9[Technical Committee for Information Systems].
2001-2005 moved to the National Institute of Informatics (NII) as professor and director, department of multimedia research. At NII, joined the Digital Silkroad Project and initiated NII-ToyoBunko digital archive.
Beginning from about 1975 through about 1995, was involved in planning, managing and evaluating several governmental information centers: National Ethnological Museum, National Institute of Japanese Literature and National Center for Science Information System (NACSIS, the precursor of NII) etc.
After retirement from NII, started to study American and English poetry. Taught DBMS at Kyoto College of Graduate Studies for Informatics (visiting professor 2006-2007,) Tokyo University of Science (visiting lecturer 2006-2008,)and Cyber University (professor 2007-2008, visiting professor 2008-2009.)