Sakae Kikuchi, DBA, Social Design Studies, is founder and director of the Birth and Childcare Ecology Studies Association. She is a birth educator, photographer, university lecturer, and yoga class instructor.

 

After attending the first International Homebirth Conference she co-founded REBORN, Japan’s first childbirth group organized by those with firsthand experience. Following 27 years as a practicing birth educator she entered graduate school, then served as policy secretary to a member of Japan’s House of Representatives. The Great East Japan Earthquake and nuclear disaster of 2011 caused her to reevaluate her life in Tokyo, and she decided to move to a rural area in the mountains of central Japan, where she lives today.

 

She is the author and director of the DVD film Childbirth & Living in the Era after the Great East Japan Earthquake (2017), and author of the DVD book Minna no Osan (Birth of All, published by Gendai Shokan), Eve no Shussan, Adam no Tanjo (Birth by Eve, Birth of Adam, published by Rural Culture Association Japan), and Maternity Yoga (published by Gendai Shokan). She has also co-translated and edited the Japanese translations of Birth Reborn by Michel Odent, Active Birth by Janet Balaskas, and The Book of Complete Pregnancy and Childbirth by Sheila Kitzinger.