Mio Nozoe, Part 2

Working on the world stage is empowering

Mio Nozoe feeds a tortoise on the Galapagos Islands. (She visited there in February 2000, serving as a translator on a Peace Boat voyage.)

Mio Nozoe

Born in Tokyo in 1975. While in college, she served as an emergency aid volunteer in Kobe after a major earthquake struck the city in 1995, and also spent time as a volunteer in Iran, Colombia, and the former Yugoslavia. She earned an MA in Social Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science. After passing an examination conducted by Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for international work, she began working in support of tsunami victims in Sri Lanka. She has also been posted in Sudan and took on her current position in Somalia in 2008.

When I was a university student, I wanted to be an actress for the stage. I was eager to be in school plays when I was in elementary school and junior high, and I became obsessed with musicals when I studied abroad in high school. I loved performing and it was wonderful working together to put on a play. It was thrilling to stand on the stage in front of a big audience and portray a person different from myself.

Rather than longing for the glamour of entertainment, though, I was most interested in experiencing the lives of other people through the theater. At the same time, I think I've had a strong interest in the world around me since I was a child.

In school, I once gave a speech where I talked about wanting to go out into the world and visit refugee camps like Tetsuko Kuroyanagi [an actress who was a UNICEF goodwill ambassador]. When I was in junior high, my dream for the future was to become friends with people around the world. Because of my father's job, I lived in Korea for two years when I was in elementary school and I also studied abroad at an American high school for a year. So I have been familiar with foreign countries since I was young.

There were a variety of other things, as well, that piqued my interest in life abroad. My father often showed me newspaper articles about Japanese nationals working abroad or other interesting articles about international life, and someone gave me some books on travel abroad.

By traveling to Rwanda when I was a sophomore in college, I was able to gain a clear vision for my future.

It was the year following the 1994 genocide that took place in Rwanda amid a conflict between the Tutsi and the Hutu. I went there during my summer break and saw a number of bodies in a quiet church. I looked at the sun shining through a small window there and thought about all this death and how life just went on around it. And I realized how easy my own life had been while such things were occurring out in the world.

At the same time, I felt that the future could be different after seeing some NGO workers who were involved in building a new elementary school near the church. I saw that these "tragedies far away," which I had only known through the newspaper and on TV, were actually the events changing the course of human history. This important experience changed my way of perceiving the world.

On the plane coming home from Africa, I wrote a promise to myself in my diary that I would live my life on the large stage of real life rather than the beautiful and artificial stage of the theater.

At that point, though, I didn't have a clear idea about what to do. During my days as a student, I was active in many areas, like the swimming club, plays and musicals, and backpacking trips, but I wasn't exactly an honor student.

In high school, I took a special course about the world today and we had to make presentations and engage in discussion. I also really enjoyed writing essays about such things in Japanese class.

So I guess you could say, in junior high I cultivated the field for my career, in high school I planted the seeds, and in college my direction began to sprout and grow. I did everything I could think of to gain experience of the world while pondering the sort of role I might play.

Through part-time work I was able to earn enough money to take several backpacking trips during vacations, giving me the chance to visit China, India, Africa, Central America, and Europe. These trips left deep impressions that helped inspire me to play a part on the world stage.