Nejiko Suwa was a Japanese violinist who earned fame as a child prodigy during the inter-war period. In early Shōwa Japan she was dubbed "The Girl Genius with the Beautiful Face". She was born in Tokyo in 1920. Her father was a wealthy industrialist who ran a fertilizer factory in Yamagata Prefecture, and her mother was an aspiring singer who had studied music in Yamagata.
By the age of three, Suwa was recognized as having perfect pitch and could accurately sing back classical recordings from her family's collection. She was first taught violin by Nakajima Tazuruko, and her rapid progress led her to study with his teacher, the Russian-born violinist Ōno Anna. In 1930 she met Efrem Zimbalist during his second Asian tour, and her performance of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto impressed him so strongly that the encounter became headline news in Japan. Zimbalist advised her to study abroad, but she remained in Japan for another six years, studying with the Russian violinist Alexander Mogilevsky.
On 9 April 1932, Suwa gave her debut public recital at the Nippon Seinenkan in Tokyo and was hailed as a wunderkind. Between 1933 and 1935, she recorded twenty-six 78 RPM sides for Nippon Columbia, accompanied by Ueda Masashi and Nadezhda Leuchtenberg. In 1936, after interest in her playing from the Belgian ambassador to Japan, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsored her study in Belgium with Boris Kamensky, to whom she had earlier been introduced.
When World War II began in 1939, Suwa chose to remain in Paris with Kamensky's family rather than return to Japan. In 1942, as Nazi occupation threatened Paris, Kamensky asked the Japanese Embassy in France to care for her. There she met Ōga Koshirō, a member of the embassy staff whom she later married. Because Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan were allied under the Tripartite Pact, Suwa was able to continue performing in Europe, including concerts for wounded German soldiers. In October 1943 she appeared as soloist with the Berlin Philharmonic under Hans Knappertsbusch to great acclaim.
On 22 February 1943, Joseph Goebbels presented Suwa with a violin in recognition of her services to German troops and her artistry. The instrument was believed to be a Stradivarius, though its provenance later became controversial in the United States because it may have been confiscated from a previous Jewish owner under the Nazi regime. The exact identity and history of the violin remain uncertain.
Suwa continued touring in Germany during the war, but in August 1944 she was forced to flee Paris as Allied forces approached. In April 1945 she joined the entourage of Japanese Ambassador Ōshima at the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, and then moved with the diplomatic mission to Bad Gastein when the war in Europe ended. In May 1945 she was captured in the Austrian Alps by the Seventh United States Army along with the Japanese diplomatic mission. She was transported from Le Havre to New York, briefly detained in Pennsylvania, and then returned to Japan in November 1945.
After the war, Suwa resumed her performing career. She appeared at a benefit concert at the Hollywood Bowl as the first Japanese musical star to set foot on American soil since the signing of the peace treaty. She also gave numerous concerts in Japan, including a 1952 performance for war criminals at Sugamo Prison. In her later career she released recordings of Bach's Sonatas and Partitas and Beethoven's Kreutzer and Spring sonatas.
The early period of Suwa's life in Europe was later recounted in a book by Fukada Yusuke, which was adapted into a television film for TV Asahi in 1985. Suwa died at her home in Tokyo on 6 March 2012 at the age of 92.