Mizue Imai

Mizue İmai was born in Saitama in 1976. She graduated from the Department of Japanese History in Taisho University. She learned about relations between Turkey and Japan in a class. This sparked her interest in Turkey and in 2001 she visited Turkey first time and stayed for 2 months. At that time she experienced the beauty of oya and kilim, and learned about them. In 2002 she visited Turkey again and stayed 3 months to learn how to weave kilim and oya. After going back to Japan, she began teaching classes of kilim weaving. In 2003 she became a tutor at the NHK cultural center. In 2005 she visited Turkey again and stayed for a year to research oya. In 2006 she opened oya classes in Japan. She began tutoring again at NHK as well as at the Yomiuri Japanese TV Cultural Center. In 2006 she published a book: “Traditional Turkish race: İğne Oyaları” and began online instruction classes on the making of oya. In the same year, she founded the Turkish handicrafts Association with Yuko Kojima. In 2007 she published her second book: “Traditional Turkish race 2: İğne Dantel”. She re-established the Turkish Handicrafts Association and changed the name to “Oya no Kai”. In 2008 she received a letter of appreciation from Akdeniz University.