Born in Gifu in 1979 into an agricultural family, Masaru Kawai spent his youth running running around the local mountains and forests and playing in his relatives timber yard and workshop. After graduating with an architecture major from Kyoto Seika University in 2001, Kawai undertook woodworking training in Hida (a region in Northern Gifu, rich in hardwoods and well known for its timber furniture) and apprenticed with a furniture maker in Kyoto. He later established his own independent workshop in 2007 and his SOMA brand in 2016. Kawai exclusively uses locally sourced Japanese timbers and through his work and his activities he advocates for 'a culture in which we live together with the forest'
