Totto-Chan : The Little Girl at the Window

TETSUKO KUROYANAGI, daughter of the celebrated violinist, was voted Japan’s most popular television personality fourteen times. She studied to become an opera singer but then became an actress instead, winning a prestigious award for her work in radio and television. She spent 1972 in New York studying acting, and was critically acclaimed in Japan for her leading role in works by Albee and Shaffer and in Melchior Lengyel’s “Ninotchka.” Her daily television talk show, “Tetsuko’s Room,” is still going strong after more than twenty years. Japan’s first such program, it was recently awarded television’s highest prize. This and the other shows on which she regularly appears all enjoy top viewer ratings.

Devoted to welfare and conservation, Kuroyanagi is Asia’s first UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador (see Totto-chan’s Children and serves on the board of the Worldwide Fund for Nature. The Totto Foundation—financed with her book royalties—provides professional training to deaf actors, with whom Kuroyanagi often appears. Kuroyanagi has twice brought America’s National Theater of the Deaf to Japan, acting with them in sign language. She is the author of ten books.