Music critic, pianist and teacher. He has graduated from Musashino Academia Musicae in his native Tokyo and completed, with distinction, postgraduate studies at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw on a scholarship granted by the Polish Government. His piano teachers have included Nobuko Soma, Akiyoshi Ishiguro, Lidia Kozubek, Barbara Hesse-Bukowska, Jerzy Sulikowski and Tatiana Shebanova. He has appeared in concert in Europe and Japan.

Koji Shimoda is also a passionate educator. He taught piano for eight years at the Józef Elsner State Secondary School of Music (Państwowa Szkoła Muzyczna II stopnia im. Józefa Elsnera) in Warsaw. Currently, he teaches and lectures on the interpretation of Chopin’s music at the biggest universities of music in Japan, such as the Toho Gakuen School of Music, the Soai University or the Ferris University, as well as during music courses held at Mikigakki-Kaiseikan. In his native country, he is also a member of the PTNA - Piano Teachers’ National Association.

The pianist has sat on the juries of such international competitions as Artur Rubinstein in Memoriam in Bydgoszcz, Chopin for Children (Chopin dla najmłodszych) in Antonin, Sengawa Piano Audition in Tokyo, Czerny-Stefańska in Memoriam in Aomori, where he was chairman of the jury, and competitions organised by the PTNA. A lot of his students have won international music competitions, e.g. in Porto (Portugal), the Viotti Competition, in Livorno (Italy), the Schnabel Competition, the Steinway Competition in Germany, in San Sebastian (Spain), the Dorothy Mackenzie Competition in New York, the Rachmaninoff Competition in Moscow and such Polish competitions as the Anton Rubinstein Competition in Bydgoszcz, the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw and the Baltic Piano Competition in Gdańsk.

Koji Shimoda is a distinguished music editor and author of numerous articles written for the most influential Japanese music magazines, such as Record Geijutsu, Ongaku-no Tomo, Musica Nova and Chopin. His cycle of articles titled ‘Koji Shimoda’s Piano Masterpieces Anatomy’, written since 2011 for Recording Arts, has been widely read and acclaimed. His other scholarly works include Truthful Interpretation of Chopin (Yamaha Music Media, 2010), Chopin All Compositions (Hanna, 1997), Competition Trivia Dictionary (Yamaha Music Media, 2005) and Chopin Book (Ongaku-no Tomo, 2015).

The artist collaborates with the media as a coordinator of various initiatives connected with music. One of his most interesting projects has been a series called Forest of Piano aired by the Japanese TV station NHK. There has also been a book publication with the same title to accompany the TV series.

Earlier in 2019, Koji Shimoda has become the curator of ‘Chopin – Portrayed in 200 Years of Images’, an exhibition shown in Japan.