Relationship psychology researcher. Author.
I’ve studied the love lives of over 30,000 people. Here’s what I learned: connection is not luck. It’s a skill, and Japan has a word for it.
Discover “En”
In Japanese, we have a word that doesn’t exist in English: En (縁).
En is the invisible thread that connects people. It’s more than a “relationship,” deeper than a “bond,” and less random than “fate.” En is the connection between you and another person, one that can be noticed, nurtured, and grown, or ignored and left to wither.
Westerners often ask: “How do I find the right person?”
The philosophy of En asks a different question: “How do I cultivate the connections already around me?”
I did not begin as someone who was good with people. I had a stammer and blushed the moment anyone looked at me, and for years I believed connection was a talent I had been born without. What changed things was not confidence. It was learning that connection has a structure, and that a structure can be practised. I have since run a matchmaking agency in Tokyo and sat with more than 30,000 people, listening to their stories of love, loneliness, ambition and regret.
What I found is this: the people who thrive are not the most attractive, the most talented, or the most outgoing. They are the ones who understand En and treat every connection as something alive.
In an age when loneliness is becoming a global epidemic and AI is beginning to imitate intimacy, En is the skill we all need to relearn.
Minako Sekiguchi is a Japanese relationship psychology researcher and author.
She runs a matchmaking agency in Tokyo and has walked with more than 30,000 people through love and marriage. Those rooms became her database of human behaviour: how people fall in love, why they drift apart, and what makes someone worth choosing. She lectures for companies and public institutions on the same question.
Her mission: to help introverted and quietly ambitious people around the world discover that connection is not a personality trait. It’s a practice.
A rare combination: the matchmaking room, historical research, a large audience, and hands-on AI work, all focused on one question: how do humans connect?
The Japanese philosophy of cultivating connection.
Building relationships without pretending to be someone you’re not.
What Japan’s crisis of isolation teaches the world.
What happens when machines learn intimacy.
How women with no power survived through strategic alliances.
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For podcast appearances, interviews, keynotes, workshops and publishing inquiries, I’d love to hear from you. Talks run from a 45 minute keynote to a half-day workshop, on stage or remote, for audiences in Japan and abroad. Sessions abroad are delivered in Japanese with consecutive interpretation, which organisers usually arrange; Minako can also recommend interpreters she has worked with.
English inquiries are welcome and answered in English. Minako speaks in Japanese, so talks and interviews are delivered with an interpreter, or with subtitles for recorded formats. Written commentary and email interviews are provided in English.