Born in Tokyo, Anju moved to France after being scouted as a model when she was a student, and went on to work as an international model, appearing in the Paris Collection among other achievements. After returning to Japan, she published the novel The Circus Boy and became a photographer. She subsequently went on to create her own unique world of photographs with stories into which Missing Girl, A Tiny Sun, and other novels are woven. In 2014, she published Dream Linking and launched a project to convey the dreams of children, and the photo exhibitions were held at 32 locations across the country and at the BonMrché. In parallel with Invisible Kyoto, which she unveiled in 2017 with a focus on Heian-kyo (now Kyoto), she also engaged in a long-term shooting of a work on Zhangjiajie – a World Heritage Site in China – called A Thousand Years for a Mountain Hermit, a Moment for a Dragonfly, among her many other varied activities.
Anju is involved in a wide range of work, including advertising, magazine serializations, writing, lecturing, judging artworks, and directing videos. She has been selected as a Leitz Phone Ambassador by Leica, Germany. As her life’s work, she works with children to develop their photographic reading skills.
