Akemi is a Nikkei storyteller, writer, teacher and visual/experiential creative. She grew up on a consistent diet of family stories, Cricket Magazine, her grandmother’s rum cake and Disney’s Fantasia (1940) on VHS. She has familial roots in Taiji-cho, Wakayama-ken, the neighborhood of Asakusa in Tōkyō-to and Terminal Island. She is proud to be descended from survivors of the 9066 incarceration camps and Great Tokyo Air Raids of World War II.

Akemi grew up immersed in the world of karate-do and began her Shotokan karate training at age 3 under the instruction of her father, Isao Gary Tsutsui, at Colorado Budokan. She has also been fortunate to train with masters of other karate styles in California, Hawaii, and Japan. Her upbringing within a Japanese cultural art and experience as a kata athlete has informed her perspectives on the intersectionality of tradition, ancestral wisdom and modern identity, which is foundational to the work of Little Well Studio. Akemi describes karate-do as her ethnic and spiritual identity in motion.