Profile

Eiki comes from a Japanese family of his mother and sister, and grew up in a working-class society in northern Osaka. As the only breadwinner of her family, his mother worked as a nurse day and night to put a roof over the family's head and send her kids to school as managing everything within her means. From his early years, Eiki started to help family chores for prepareing foods and looking after his sister. Watching his mother's small frame toughing out and getting by everyday life, and witnessing how women were shackled with disadvantages in Japan's society, Eiki grew up feeling home the sense of women's strength that many men hardly emulate. Although being frugal, Eiki didn't miss the culture; he was keen on tv animes and shows, games and radio music programmes. Later in teenage years, forays into  American Village in Shinsaibashi with school mates and night outs in Minami area became weekend activities. He was an excited child surrounded by his sister, cousins and friends, and his favourite childhood pastimes were playing with their hair and watching make-up adverts on tv.

In his teenage years he was in swimming teams and was made to swim 20 km a day in summer seasons. Discipline was encouraged in Japan's youth education in those days and Eiki was entering national competitions especially in his high-school years. Holding local records for some swimming strokes, which was unbroken for good several years after his graduation,  he carried on his training but he started to drift towards interests that are fashionable and entertaining. In student years he took various part-time jobs from a paper boy to kitchens to izakayas to casinos. He enjoyed working at ski resorts in each year-end break in his uni years.  He learnt perseverance and hard-working ethics through his upbringing and accumulated an understanding of the importance of doing what people really need. 

Returning to Japan with the directional position for the international beauty brand's Japan branch in 2008, Eiki was circuiting Asia by directing hair for shows, seminars, PR events and product launches, working closely with the PR and education department of the company. At this point, he was appointed as the artistic director of hair for Aveda Japan. It was not for one franchise salon's director but it was for the entire corporate of Aveda Japan. He was immediately met with the stark difference in working manners and cultures between Japanese and western, not just salon hairdressers, but all connected industries as structures. Japanese are good at making simple things complicated with self-made restrictions. Although he recalls 'everyone was nice and everything was good', he felt that he needed to grow fast and didn't have time to be stymied by keeping pace with rituals and red tapes. This was about the work cultures in his related fields in Japan. Another obvious difference was technical aspects. It was baffling for him when a hairdresser, who made a terrible hair job on a non-Japanese customer, kept making Japanese people's hair nice and shiny. He felt dire need of skilled hairdressing for non-Japanese hair in Japan. At this point, he could have re-trained himself in Japanese techniques and become another Japanese hairdresser with oversea experience. But instead, what he did was to double-down his quest for the international methods. He again followed his call to become a top-level hairstylist in the global hairdressing fair and square like many top famous hairdressers, even though he well understood that marketing for Japanese clients using his oversea experience is far more profitable in Japan. For him, this was about the pursuit of the skill in the genre of hairdressing that his heart goes to. He was square and serious. But he goes 'I'm doing things that I love most, I can't be happier and I'm so lucky!' He briefly explored China by doing session work (hair for photo shoots and fashion shows, not salon jobs) and met incredible Chinese creators in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. He loved China and its people, who were very direct and result-oriented, and cared little about the process. He says 'I want to work with them again in the future at progressed levels'. In 2014 Eiki launched his own brand Secret Garden where he can bring his expertise and develop it further for the clients and partners. This is our story how a British hair salon was born in Tokyo.

Since the opening of Secret Garden, Eiki has been continuing his pursuit of international hairdressing techniques in order to reach the best of the field. He has had so far only internationals and foreign-mixed Japanese nationals, not a traditional all-Japanese client. He has strength in international hair, and now he plans to collaborate with Japanese stylists to make the business grow. Alongside the salon work, he occasionally works with independent photographers for commercial and editorial projects and with hair care brands for publicity assignments. Other than work life Eiki loves nature, cooking, health, culture (music, art, fashion, films, etc), world history, science (organic chemistry, social science, biology, etc) and the global economy. He is passionate about our environment and very concerned about its degradation caused by our hands. His ethos is carried into our brand and responsible actionss are taken in our every practice. He is a staunchy supporter of gender equality and gender minority rights where he questions about social understanding and lack of education in his country. He tries to make positive actions through what he does in this hair community.