Born in 1938 in Kyōto, Akeji is raised by one of his grandfathers, who lived on a mountain north of the ancient capital. A master of martial arts and a follower of Shintō, the old man taught him ancestral shamanic practices from an early age and introduced him to swordplay. He also made him aware of the art of the brush and the way of tea. During his adolescence, Akeji wandered from Shintō shrines to Buddhist monasteries, which allowed him to become familiar with traditional pharmacopoeia. He then enrolled at Kyōto University to study law and continued his studies in chemistry and natural sciences at Shimane University. As a young graduate, Akeji joined a think tank convened at the request of then Prime Minister Hatoyama Ichirō. After returning from a one-year stay in France, he left political life and got married.
A few years later, in 1969, at the age of 31, Akeji decided with his wife Asako to go and live in the Himuro valley, on the slopes of Mount Kuramayama, in a forest refuge which became their hermitage for nearly fifty years. Their daily life is made of prayers to evoke the spirits of the forest, tea ceremonies as well as harvesting. Returning to the place of his childhood, Akeji leads a timeless life, devoting himself to calligraphy in a constant dialogue with nature, which he has never ceased to venerate. Following the rhythm of the seasons, the calligrapher collects seeds, fruits, flowers, bark and roots. He extracts the dye by drying, grinding, burning or fermenting, using traditional processes. As he does not have a workshop, he creates his works in the forest.
Like many calligraphers, Akeji makes his own brushes using the hair of different animals: horse, boar, deer, badger, fox. As for the supports, he obtains the papers from craftsmen often elevated to the rank of "Living National Treasure".
Traced with an immediate gesture, the archaic characters, often difficult to identify, take on elusive forms evoking the impermanence of things (mono no aware). Secret, intimate correspondences between the calligraphic signs and the plants from which Akeji has extracted the dyes inhabit his creations, animating them with a primordial rhythm and a profound meaning, which reveal the animist essence of his work.