The Japanese violinist Michiko Kamiya was born in Nagoya in 1973 and started to learn the violin at the age of five. Her career has brought a series of competition successes from the age of eleven onwards. Her early victories were followed in 1990 with the award of a diploma as a finalist in the 59th Japan Music Concours and in 1992 she became a co-founder of the Paulonia Quartet, which won the Hideo Saito Prize in the chamber-music section of the Tokyo International Music Competition, in the same year winning second prize in the Paganini International Violin Competition, and subsequently appearing in a broadcast and televised performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto with the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Naoto Otomo. A series of foreign tours and festival performances followed, with further awards. In 1995 she completed her studies at the Toho Gakuen School of Music and studied for a year at the Juilliard School with Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki, before moving to London, where she studied with György Pauk. In October 1997 she won the Hanover Joachim International Violin Competition, when she again played the Sibelius Violin Concerto. She continues to appear widely in concerts in Japan and in Europe.

Discography