Grand tea master
Visiting Professor at Kyoto University
Visiting Professor at Kyoto City University of Arts
Visiting Professor at Department of Architecture of Kwansei Gakuin University

Born in 1976, in Ehime Prefecture.
Graduate of Kobe University. He studied Japanese tea culture from an early age, and established the Hoshinkai Tea Society in 1997. Mr. Kimura presides over the society’s training facilities in Kyoto and Tokyo and in various regions of the country. A wide range of artists, including potters, academics, researchers and executives have studied the tea ceremony at the Hoshinkai and influenced their own expressions.

Japanese tea ceremony culture is described as the Liberal Arts of hospitality. It is closely related to a wide range of arts, from ceramics to various crafts such as lacquer and woodwork, architecture and the food environment.
He also writes on the subject of the tea ceremony in various media and is involved in the direction of exhibitions. He works in collaboration with many Japanese and overseas creators, seeking to obtain understanding of the Japanese tea culture from multiple perspectives. Mr. Kimura has earned a reputation for his stance of reinterpreting the ancient in modern terms, and his broad expression not only of Japanese tea culture but Japanese culture across a wide range of stages. He was decorated Medal with Dark Blue Ribbon by His Majesty the Emperor in 2010.

In 2005 he directed the installation of the Kuan tea room (designed by Hisanobu Tsujimura) at the Milano Salone and the tea room (TEEHAUS, designed by Kengo Kuma) at the Museum fur Angewandt Kunst (design and arts museum) in Germany. In 2011 he was awarded the Gold Prize by the Japan Commercial Environmental Design Association (JCD) for the Kasaan tea room he directed.