Born in Toyama, Japan. Minako was inspired by Michelangelo's artwork and studied oil painting at Musashino Art University in Tokyo. In 2001, three days after she moved to the US to study art, the Sept.11 attacks occurred near her workplace in NYC. Minako found beautiful marble blocks in the trash container near Grand Zero's construction site and decided to create something beautiful from the abandoned stones. She carved marble statues called "Series for PEACE" then won the Best Young Artist Scholarship 2004 from the NSS. After multiple awards, in 2013, she won the M2M Public Art competition in NYC and created her first monument "Loves" for Riverside Park. She has been designing and fabricating monuments, including Holocaust Memorial in NJ, which inspired her to study "Public Art for Urban Design" at Harvard University in 2017. In 2020, during the world pandemic by Covid-19, Minako installed a second marble monument "Lovers" in Japan. Minako lives and works in New York City.