About

Founder｜Masae Satouchi

Masae Satouchi is a Japanese-born artist, cultural producer, and author redefining kimono as a language of identity, freedom, and peace. Raised in Shiga Prefecture, Japan, and living in New York for over 20 years, she is one of the few kimono performers active for more than a decade, creating and producing distinctive works across New York, Japan, and international stages. Her practice has expanded into universities, where she creates safe and empowering spaces for people to explore self-expression, presence, and embodied identity through color, movement, and dress. Now in an international marriage and raising bilingual children, Satouchi founded New York Kimono Academy while pregnant with her daughter—driven by a life mission to remove borders around kimono and pass this living art to the next generation from New York to the world.
​