She was born in Tsugaru, Aomori in Japan, known for its heavy snow in the winter. She spent her childhood days in Saitama, a prefecture neighboring Tokyo on the northern border. “Tsugaru Onna” (Women born in Tsugaru) are known for having strong passionate personalities. There were many medical doctors among Kohana’s ancestors on her father’s side since the Edo period, and her father is also a doctor. She sensed from her childhood that she should become a doctor herself. She had been thinking deeply since her childhood days about how human emotions arise. When watching a TV program on the human brain when she was 10 years old, she became even more interested in how human emotion is created in the brain. Her mother took her to museums and art galleries every weekend. She drew reproductions of great masters’ works such as Picasso and Munch in her diary. She also created her own works. Her childhood dream was to become “a child psychologist and the author of a picture book” as she wrote in her junior school essay.
When she was a junior high school student, she encountered the work of Vlaminck and was shocked by the power as the painting showed a new definition of beauty, depicting mud on a snowmelt road. When she was 17, she pondered whether to become an artist or a doctor, but when she got to know Hippocrates teaching that medicine is art, she decided to become a doctor. During her med school years, Kohana went to an art school on the weekends, majoring in sculpture. She studied various styles of art in that school and was especially impressed by conceptual art, which has the power to change people’s concept at a glance. Kohana created installation pieces, performances using movies and mixed materials. Her works have a blended taste of traditional Japanese and Western styles and the power to affect the viewer’s emotions emanating from their primal experiences. Since 2016, She has participated JCAT team and she has exhibited much artwork using Japanese traditional handmade paper in New York.
As a doctor, Kohana is a child psychiatrist and a researcher specializing in the field of psychiatric problems in children.