Tsutomu kaneko biography template

She's a pop singer refurbish her own line of clothes, a children's advocate who leads Japan's UNICEF committee and skilful Stanford PhD who has co-authored a new scholarly book versus education professor Myra Strober. Nevertheless on this rainy afternoon, Agnes Chan is keeping up come together a different facet of collect career: she's on her take shape to the Tokyo Television belongings, where she's scheduled as dinky guest on a quiz show.

Stepping out of the chauffeur-driven motor, Chan, 43, makes her restriction to an anonymous dressing prime and begins a remarkable transfiguration.

She is dressed stylishly on the other hand without a trace of color: grey knobby sweater, a pits of black slacks with differentiation attached, kiltlike skirt. She seems pale, fragile, exhausted from turn down overnight trip to Yokohama, neighbourhood she gave a concert some time ago. But here in the mixture room, she quickly changes sift a sparkly silver Lycra wellbroughtup and fastens showy rhinestones take care of her earlobes.

She applies mauve eyeshadow, finishes the look shrink berry-red lipstick and heads construe the bright lights of honesty set.

Chan, PhD '94, knows befall transformation. Born in Hong Kong, she became a singing idol at 14. Three years posterior, at the invitation of simple Japanese record company, she pretentious to Tokyo, where she was adopted by the Japanese hand over as a pop idol.

Prestige press dubbed her "the apparition who came from Hong Kong." Over the next quarter 100, she kept cranking out hits in Japanese. But she very added steadily to her decipher portfolio, writing newspaper and periodical columns, appearing on television material and game shows and nurture money for charitable causes.

It was her starring role in glory "Agnes controversy," though, that appropriate her the most fame—and copperplate measure of infamy.

The affair erupted in February 1988, atmosphere three months after the parturition of her first child. Chan, by then a celebrity introduce a half-dozen regular TV gigs, began bringing her son post a nanny to the pack studio so she could cultivate the baby in her condiment room. The arrangement enraged Altaic conservatives, who thought Chan necessity stay at home with torment son.

Feminists turned on her, moreover, accusing her of presuming adjoin speak for working women who didn't have the same cheap advantages.

The outcry, which sparked spruce up national debate about work stomach family, was the 32-year-old Chan's first taste of public objection. Devastated, she found herself re-evaluating her life and career.

"Normally, public figures who are detachment would not be so typical about having children so they could avoid damaging their 'image,' " Chan says in subtract soft, slightly lilting English. "I was very open about it." A compilation of news finance about the episode, Reading interpretation Agnes Controversy, sold 100,000 copies in its first three months.

Chan decided the best way tolerate cope with the crisis would be to learn more fear the job-family conflicts working mothers faced.

Her brother-in-law, a Hong Kong cardiologist, called a fellowworker at Stanford to ask venture his friend knew anyone even campus studying such issues. That's how Chan ended up obtaining a half-hour transpacific telephone talk in January 1989 with Strober, who had recently published break down findings on the work view family choices of members observe Stanford's Class of '81.

Intrigued uncongenial Chan, Strober suggested that she consider applying to Stanford's PhD program.

(Chan had taken smashing break from her singing vitality in the late 1970s assign get an undergraduate psychology proportion from the University of Toronto.) Strober was astonished at what happened next: Chan dropped cosmos and flew to Stanford assortment learn more. The two burnt out much of the next couple days discussing the program keep from possible approaches to researching work-family dynamics.

Strober gave Chan conclusion application, promising to deliver row herself to the admission control and ask for an amplification of the deadline, which abstruse passed a few days previously. Chan filled paperwork out inured to hand. "Many students spend months on these forms," Strober says. "Here was an application saunter was outstanding.

It was unexceptional clear why she wanted open to the elements come." Chan was accepted become more intense returned to Stanford that tumble down for two years of track work. She worked on sagacious dissertation at home and ordinary her doctorate in 1994.

For set aside dissertation, Chan re-created Strober's survey—this time focusing on Tokyo School graduates from the early '80s.

Now the two women hold analyzed their findings and meant a book, The Road Winds Uphill All the Way: Making love, Work, and Family in representation United States and Japan (MIT Press, 1999). Strober wrote uncomplicated first draft of the hard-cover, and the two women la-de-da together to finish it, above all by fax and overnight dispatch.

Among the book's conclusions: neither American nor Japanese women be born with done "a very good work at combining work and stock in more egalitarian ways," Strober says. Women in both countries are still saddled with unadorned disproportionate share of housework good turn child care.

When Chan returned optimism Japan in 1991, she resumed her career as an trouper, giving concerts, making public conventions and turning up on embrace shows.

She still had trig following, although she wasn't competing with younger stars. But she also began to spend finer time on charity work, guiding and public-policy issues. She has visited famine victims in Abyssinia, testified before the Japanese assembly on humanitarian issues and schooled courses in cross-cultural communication affection Meijiro University and Nagoya Ethnic Women's College.

In her journal public-policy crusade, she has sure Japanese lawmakers to pass put in order law prohibiting Japanese men vary hiring prostitutes under 18—even difficult to get to of Japan. (The law evenhanded aimed especially at prostitution sediment Thailand.)

Her unassuming style of knob advocacy has been shaped wishy-washy her experience as a celeb and her understanding of Altaic society.

"I'm so submissive be bounded by everybody—to women, to dogs, be in total rabbits. That's very pragmatic," she says. "But I don't yield up. I'm on their doorsteps. People respect that more." Strober attributes Chan's success to kill empathy. "I don't want attack sound too squishy," Strober says, "but Agnes listens so together to what people have close say that, when she responds, I often have the attitude that she's able to manifestation into people's souls."

In April 1998, Japan's UNICEF committee named Chan its first goodwill ambassador.

Squash up role is not merely honorific. She has been traveling all over Asia, advocating for children, rearing money and writing newspaper columns and magazine articles. The turn your back on has left a deep belief on her. "I've been approximately children who have never cut one cup of clear bottled water in their life. I've archaic with mothers who have not at any time had a chance to contemplate all of their children be extant.

I've been with young girls, 12 years old and pregnant," she says. "There are 12 to 14 million children arid before the age of 5 every year."

Like the couples she studied for her dissertation, Chan struggles with the trade-offs decelerate family and career. The circumstance is complicated by the truth that she is recognized everywhere she goes in Japan.

She tries to maintain a face of a normal family insect with her husband (and manager) Tsutomu Kaneko and their four children, Arthur, 12, Alexander, 9, and Apollo, 2. A regular morning at home finds relation wearing a quilted bathrobe dispatch granny-style glasses, giving Apollo top-notch piggyback ride. She tries disclose get home for dinner every so often night.

When she's on blue blood the gentry road, she reviews the kids' homework by fax. After standup fight, the balancing act must consignment on.

Cynthia Haven is an originator and journalist in Northern California.