Kikuko Kanai has been played on NTS in shows including Tafelmusik w/ Francesco Fusaro, featured first on 16 April 2023. Songs played include Variations On Tensagunu-Hana.

Kikuko Kanai (金井喜久子, Kanai Kikuko, March 13, 1906 – 1986) was a composer of classical music, born as Kikuko Kabira (川平喜久子) on Miyako Island, which today belongs to the Okinawa prefecture of Japan. Aged eight she learned to play the koto (a zither), later she studied the biwa (a lute) and violin, too.

After graduating from the First Public Women's High School of the Okinawa Prefecture Kanai studied singing at the Japanese Music School in Tokyo. Having graduated there, she became the first Japanese woman who attended the Tokyo School of Music being matriculated in the seminar of composition. She studied under Shimofusa Kan'ichi (下総皖一, a pupil of Paul Hindemith) and Go Taijirô (呉泰次郎, a pupil of Klaus Pringsheim) and finished her studies there in 1938.

After graduation she continued her studies with Go Taijirô specializing in Japanese singing. From 1940 on she trained orchestration under Otaka Hisatada (尾高尚忠) and from 1947 on she studied counterpoint under Hirao Kishio (平尾 貴四男). In 1940 she was the first Japanese woman who wrote and presented a symphony. But its later piano scetches miss the 2nd and 3rd movement of the three-part symphony and it's until today very seldomly heard in full length.

During the 1940-ties she had her breakthrough in the concert scene, mainly supported by Otaka who conducted the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra and presented works of Kanai. In 1954 she studied the twelve-tone technique under Hans-Joachim Koellreutter while attending the 7th International Folk Music Conference in São Paolo as representative of Japan.

In Japan she gained some recognition for being one of the first composers to show an interest in the music of the Ryukyu Islands (which today form the Okinawa prefecture) and she incorporated some of its characteristics into her works, too.