About 30 years ago, Michi Yamamura was an aspiring actress who was about to end her brief stint with a Tokyo-based theater company in line with a promise she made her mother, who believed her daughter should have a "regular job" with a stable income.
Having understood her mother's concern, which stemmed partly from her struggle of single parenthood after Yamamura's father died when she was 3, the Tsuda College graduate changed her career goal to broadcasting, becoming a newscaster with Fuji Television Network Inc. in 1980.
But today, Yamamura, 51, has achieved something few people, including herself, thought would be possible by performing an original two-person play, which she wrote, in an off-Broadway theater in New York for English speakers, a feat few Japanese have accomplished.