Yoshihiko Kikuchi has been a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints since 1977, and was the first native Asian to be called as a general authority of the LDS Church. Kikuchi was born on the island of Hokaido. His father served in the military and was killed by American bombing. Kikuchi joined the LDS Church in the late 1950s. As a young man Kikuchi served as a building missionary for the LDS Church. After completing his education, he worked for a cookware firm. Later, he worked as the national sales manager for an international company, and eventually operated his own export import company. During this time, Kikuchi was also continuing to serve in the LDS Church, including as president of one of the church's branches in Tokyo. When the Tokyo Stake, the first formed anywhere in Asia was organized, Kikuchi was called as first counselor in the stake presidency.. He was later called as the president of the Tokyo Stake. In 1977, Kikuchi was called into full-time church service as a general authority. He became a seventy and member of the First Quorum of the Seventy at the church's October 1977 general conference. After becoming a general authority, Kikuchi was assigned to preside over the affairs of the church in Japan. As area supervisor from 1978 to 1982, Kikuchi promoted rapid proselytizing of local adult converts, especially through baptism, and published graphs in the official Area News that tracked and compared the number of baptisms in each mission. However, as scholar Jiro Numano has noted, these "hasty baptisms" had negative effects on the church, which encountered difficulty integrating large numbers of newly-baptized converts unschooled in doctrine and practice, and on missionaries, who had to deal with apparently contradictory directions from different church leaders about how and whom to baptize. From 1987 to 1989, Kikuchi served as president of the church's HawaiiHonoluluMission. In 1987, Kikuchi was a keynote speaker at the first major African-American family history conference sponsored by the LDS Church. From 1994 to 1997, he served as president of the Tokyo Japan Temple. On October 1, 2011, Kikuchi was released from the First Quorum of the Seventy and designated as an emeritus general authority. Kikuchi has been married to Toshiko Koshiya since 1964 and they are the parents of four children.
