Born in Fukuoka, Japan, and raised in Honolulu, Hawai'i, Kenji's first adventure in the mainland US was in Worcester, Massachussets, where he attended Clark University. The harsh winter environs of Worcester didn't suit our island hero. So it was that, on a visit to a friend in San Francisco during his sophomore year, Kenji realized he had initially landed on the wrong coast. He sent word to the folks back East: "Good luck with all that. I'm not coming back." Kenji enrolled in the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and his career in film and television was begun. After graduation, Kenji worked as a freelance PA & DP before landing an opportunity to run SF duplication house Dub Express in 1998. Under Kenji's leadership as Operations Manager, Dub Express expanded its service offering to include non-linear editing, media compression and DVD authoring. After several years at the helm Kenji had established a reputation as a driven and technically savvy media professional. Based on his technical experience, Kenji was tapped to oversee of media operations at Rough House Editorial in 2004 in the role of Executive Technical Director. During his time at Rough House, Kenji's brainchild, Compression Group, was launched as a spinoff business to meet the increasing demand for "beyond the cookie cutter presets" media encoding. As Producer/Technical Advisor for Phoenix Editorial / Bonfire, Kenji brings a wealth of expertise in the fine art of media compression and a keen appreciation for a thoroughly-planned post-production workflow.

When he is not consumed by the pursuit of the flawlessly compressed HD video, Kenji is usually helping his wife, Naoko, manage their household. In his "free" time, Kenji can often be found grilling and consuming massive amounts of meat, adding to his portfolio of digital still photography, curating his collection of artfully machined metal objects and apparatuses, and trying to keep up with his two beautiful children.