Terukuni Fujii

Here is a very personal story from the Taipei Times archives that I thought was very insightful. Though I was sometimes teased, I certainly never experienced any persecution or cultural ostracism to this level.

It is the story of a Japanese man named Terukuni Fujii who developed a mark of some sort on his face when he was two years old that developed into benign tumor that grew to deform his face. He seems to have overcome all the odds as I see he is currently a professor of Science of Nursing at a university.

Fujji is now 46 years old. There is a small photo of him included in the article.

Here is a quote from Fujii from the article:

With the release of his autobiography, entitled Face of Destiny, last October, Fujii became a torch bearer for 1 million people in Japan with deformed faces.

"Many of those people tend to cloister themselves at home as others look daggers at them," Fujii said in a recent interview.

"I urge those people to go out and tell others `I suffer, my heart aches,'" from the way they are treated, said Fujii, who has frequently been spat at in the street.

"I have been saying the same thing for two decades ... but there are finally moves to break down the invisible wall" between the handicapped and others, he said.