Ryuki Kassai is a founding professor and chair of the Department of Community and Family Medicine at Fukushima Medical University, Fukushima, Japan. He is vice president of the Japanese Academy of Family Medicine.

Ryuki Kassai graduated from Hokkaido University School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan, in 1984, and took clinical training in paediatrics and paediatric neurology before going to Canada as a resident in family practice at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After completing his residency training, he returned to Japan and joined Kawasaki Medical School in Kurashiki in 1992 as an assistant professor of primary care medicine.

In 1996 he moved to Hokkaido and became a founding director and chair of the Hokkaido Centre for Family Medicine, and in 1997 he started the first formal training programme for general practice and family medicine in Japan. Having made the centre a successful model of vocational training centre, Ryuki Kassai founded the first ever department of community based general practice and family medicine in Japan, at Fukushima Medical University in March 2006. He is now trying to construct prefecture wide, and then nationwide, sound systems of general practice and family medicine in Japan.

Ryuki Kassai has been a member of the local and national advisory committees on evidence based medicine, primary care, community medicine, rural medicine, clinical education, and training of teachers. He has been a member of the editorial boards of Asia Pacific Family Medicine (WONCA, Asia Pacific Region) and Clinical Evidence, the BMJ, and BMJ Knowledge. He is editor in chief of the Japanese version of Clinical Evidence (Igaku-Shoin, Tokyo, Japan). He authored and published the first Japanese textbook of family medicine in 2002, and the first Japanese clinical handbook of family practice in 2005. In November 2005, the Royal College of General Practitioners of the United Kingdom awarded him an honourable membership (MRCGP) for his international contribution to the discipline.

Married with two children, Ryuki Kassai enjoys travelling, Onsen hot springs, cross country skiing, cycling, cooking (Italian, Chinese, and Japanese), and watching films.