Hiroshi Nishikawa was born in Tokyo. His father was a naval architect whose work took him to England. It was unusual in those days to be a Japanese citizen in the UK but the whole family moved to London when Hiroshi Nishikawa was three years old.

Mr Nishikawa won a scholarship to Dulwich College aged ten and after a gap year spent exploring the Silk Road and trekking in the Himalayas, he entered St Johns College Cambridge to study medicine. He graduated in 1982. During his medical student training he had an elective for three months in Papua New Guinea where he first experienced medicine and surgery in a developing country. This would go on to influence him later in his career. He underwent training in orthopaedics, general surgery and neurosurgery before entering into the field of reconstructive plastic surgery.

He had specialist plastic training in London, Leeds, Adelaide, Taiwan and Tokyo. He became interested in the management of cosmetic patients, facial deformity, craniofacial anomalies, facial palsy and vascular malformations. He was appointed consultant plastic reconstructive surgeon in Leeds in 1996 and then moved to Birmingham Children’s Hospital in 2000 as consultant plastic and craniofacial reconstructive surgeon.