My narrative

A life that began looking at a hospital ceiling

Born in Akita. A malformation of the internal organs from birth. Long stays in hospital. Days when school was not possible. A childhood spent looking up at a ceiling.

Back then I thought life was unfair. Why me? I remember how far away the sky looked through the window of the ward.

Now I think differently. I am who I am because of it.

The years when people called me unfit for society

I could not do what others did. I could not read the room. I was not efficient. At school and afterwards, I was told I was wrong, again and again.

Every time someone said “you can’t”, I somehow failed in a way that proved them right. It took me a long time to get out of that loop.

Looking back, I was not unfit for society. I simply did not fit inside the frame that was already there.

Finding people development

People can change. People have possibility in them. I started a company because I wanted to say that out loud.

Komochan Inc., 2016. More than 300 talks across 40 prefectures. A great many people met along the way.

And I noticed something: people do not change because of ability. They change the moment they can believe in themselves.

Developing people is not teaching them knowledge. It is looking, together, for the light that is already inside them. That is what I believe now.

What cancer taught me

2022: the diagnosis, breast cancer. 2023: a full mastectomy of the right breast.

Life is not forever. I felt that in my body.

Lying on the operating table, I asked myself what I regretted. There was only one answer: not doing the things I wanted to do.

So I decided. While I am alive, I will do them.

From Peking to Paris

A 1929 Buick. 14,500 km. Thirty-seven days. Desert, storms, breakdowns, cancer treatment — I carried all of it and drove.

The night we lost the road on the Kazakh steppe. The morning we ferried across the Caspian Sea, a route built specifically to avoid Russia. In places where we shared no language, people helped us, and we helped them, and we kept going.

When I finished, this is what I thought: it is not about whether you can. It is about whether you will.

In 2024 I received the True Grit prize, and became the first Japanese woman to complete the Peking to Paris rally.

And now

2026. After lung surgery, still in rehabilitation, still working.

There are days when my body will not do as it is told, and plenty that does not go to plan.

And still, the experiment continues: finding this life interesting.