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1964年 新潟県村上市に生まれる。1988年 早稲田大学卒業後、商社勤務を経て、1990年 村上に戻り、家業である伝統的な鮭の加工品・塩引鮭を製造・販売する「味匠 喜っ川」に勤務。村上市のさびれてしまった商店街近代化の動きを契機に、逆に村上市に残る武家屋敷や町屋を活かした町の活性化を計画。1998年 市内に残る町屋の中の一般公開を呼びかけ、賛同した22店舗で「村上町屋商人会」を発足、吉川氏が会長に就任。自ら描いた観光マップ「村上絵図」も作成、次第に観光客が増え始める。2000年春 町の各戸に古くから伝わるひな人形を町屋の内部に展示する「城下町村上町屋の人形さま巡り」と、同年秋には屏風を展示する「町屋の屏風まつり」を企画。現在はどちらも10万人を超える人が訪れるイベントとなっている。2002年からブロック壁を黒壁に戻す活動「黒壁プロジェクト」を開始、この壁を活かした新たなイベントとして2002年秋に「宵の竹灯籠まつり」を行う。2004年 「町屋の景観再生プロジェクト」の立ち上げ。近代化されてしまった町屋の外観を昔ながらの格子や板戸に戻し、さらに、かつてその名を馳せた「村上大工」の伝統的技術の伝承・復活を視野に入れている。2004年6月 国土交通省が主催する観光カリスマ百選に選ばれる。カリスマ名称「光かがやく町屋再興カリスマ」　

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Born in 1964 in Murakami, Niigata, Kikkawa graduated from Waseda University in 1988. After working for a trading company, he returned to Murakami in 1990 to work for Misho Kikkawa, the family business of making and selling traditional salted salmon.
The movement to modernize the area around Murakami's faded shopping streets inspired Kikkawa instead to find ways to revitalize the neighborhood by taking advantage of the city's traditional old samurai houses and machiya townhouses. In 1998 he asked machiya owners in the city to open their homes to the public and founded the Murakami Machiya Akindo Kai (Murakami Machiya Merchants Association) with the 22 who responded positively. Kikkawa assumed the role of the association's president. With the help of a guide map hand-drawn by Kikkawa himself, the tourists gradually began to respond. In spring 2000 he planned the Castle Town Murakami Machiya Tour of Dolls, for which the traditional girls' festival dolls passed down in every household were put on display in the machiya. That autumn he put together the Machiya Folding Screen Festival, which did the same thing for heirloom folding screens. Today each event draws more than 100,000 people.
In 2002 Kikkawa began the Kurokabe Project, which aims to return walls made of concrete bocks to the look of traditional black lumber. Such "black walls" were used in a new event, the Evening Bamboo Lantern Festival, beginning that autumn. In 2004 he established the Machiya Townscape Revitalization Project, which aims to return old-fashioned latticework and wooden doors to the exteriors of machiya that have been modernized, with an eye to revitalizing and passing on the traditional craft of once-famous Murakami carpenters. In June 2004 Kikkawa was selected for the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport's list of One Hundred Charismatic Figures in Tourism for his "dazzling machiya revival."