"Interview with a Unique House-wife"

                  Bennie Inoue Nagao used to be a ordinary house-wife apart from the 
            fact that she was living in Switzerland. After her first son was born in 1975, 
            her carrier as a house-wife started. But after 6 years, by then her second 
            son was born, she put a period to her then carrier. She was a little bored 
            being a ordinary house-wife. So from the year 1981 she started going to the 
            university of Geneva, and majored modern French language as a full student. 
            The reason why she became a university student rather than getting employed 
            was because for a foreigner to work for a company in Switzerland, there are 
            many regulations that make the opportunity very difficult.

                        The ordinary Japanese educated women will not have made the same 
            decision as hers. Women are taught to "be a good wife" or "be a good mother". 
            But in her case, she was less influenced by her school teachers and her parents 
            at her youth. The fact that she had many male elder friends very much influenced 
            her way of thinking. She was very much appealed to the life of a boy in Japan, 
            where a boy has more liberty than a girl. So her mentality was to go to 
            university to study rather than to spend an ordinary life as a house-wife. 
            There is another reason for her going to a university. She wanted to keep up 
            with young ambitious people because she was used to competing with men from 
            her childhood.

                         She got a certificate and finished university after 4 years. 
            Then she wanted to work for the WWF(Wild World Foundation) but her husband had 
            been head-hunted by the Sasakawa peace foundation in Japan. So she gave up her 
            dream of working for the WWF and 2 years later, returned to Japan. The year was 
            1987. She then was shocked about the fact that in Japan, house-wives are 
            regarded as second-class citizens and not identified as an individual. 
            She was called, "Mr.Masafumi's wife" or "The mother of Ryosuke/Shunsuke" by her 
            friends. She then made her mind to work for JICA as a training cordinator, 
            to help those professionals from abroad to brush up their skill in Japan. 
            While she was doing this job, she felt that Japanese people lacked the 
            mentality of good behavior in an international scene. So then from the year 1991 
            she started teaching international business & social manners as a consultant. 
            The course was organized by the local administration, and at first business men 
            came to her course. But when the depression started to strike the business men's 
            purse, they no more came to this course. Instead citizens, such as house-wives(!) 
            started to come. Mean while, a young competent Swiss business man asked her to do 
            a market research about jewelry sales in Japan. The man had mistaken her as a 
            business consultant... The man was the youngest top manager of the No.1 European 
            lift company, Shindler. But because the pay was good for this job, she did this 
            research and gave the results to him. Her results appealed to him and in 1997, 
            he proposed her to start a new company in Japan together. For her, making her 
            own company was a good business education which she was interested in, so she 
            agreed with the idea of making a virtual, cyber mall on the net.

                           Bennie Inoue Nagao says that she has 6 major roles in her life now. 
            Personally she is a wife, a mother, and a daughter. Professionally she is a company 
            president and managing director, a consultant, and a training coordinator at JICA. 
            She says she is not creative, though. She says she is doing 6 different things at 
            the same time, but that has nothing to do with creativity, she says. 
            Her creativity would be to create a brand new thing out of no where. One of her is 
            to make an academic area. Especially she says she would like to make an
            "Astro-Biology" area.

                            I understand when she says she is not creative. But the fact that 
            she is doing something not so many people try, and has spent an unusual life, 
            appeals to me as creativity. I once again realize the wide definition of 
            creativity, and I would like to say to my mother, "You are creative".

Written by Shunsuke Nagao
based on the his portfolio project of 1998



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