Kakinuma specializes in American music and music from the 20th and 21st centuries. She participated in the founding of the Archival Research Center, Kyoto City University of Arts. She was involved in the restoration of the Baschet sounds sculptures that were exhibited 1970 World Expo in Osaka. At the Archival Research Center she has worked as a project leader on an ‘Oral History of Fluxus’ and the ‘Notation for Sound and Body.’ She is the author of American Experimental Music as Ethnic Music (2005). She has translated John Cage’s Silence, Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise, Kenneth Silverman’s Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, and co-translated Stuart Hall’s Questions of Cultural Identity. She currently holds the position of Professor of Musicology at Kyoto City University of Arts and is the Director of the Archival Research Center.