"I was lucky, in a way," Yuko Nishimura said. "I did most of the things I wanted. I like what I am doing now."
She wasn't always lucky. Her father died when she was a child. Her mother, a dress designer, took her from Tokyo to Akita to live in a large extended family. When Yuko, an only child, was still very young, her mother died. Yuko grew into a definite, achieving person, independent in thought and confident in opinion.
She substituted diligence in school work for phantom luck. "I attended a German Catholic mission school," she said. "When I entered Tokyo University, I wanted to study sociology and comparative social studies. Everything was haphazard then, but I went to India and wanted to do Indian studies. I traveled, and took a deep interest in the country. The second time I went to India, I joined a team of Tokyo University academics in Tamil Nadu. I was a graduate student then in the Department of Religious Studies, and was sent by the Ministry of Education."