Yasuji Nojima Volunteer Translator JAPAN

  Kumi Hayase - Japan ’s First Deaf Pharmacist
Here’s How She Realized Her Long Dream

A 29-year-old female Japanese pharmacist moved millions of audience when she told, on a popular talk show televised nationwide the other day, how she had translated her dream into reality.

Kumi Hayase, born on April 25, 1975 in Oita in the southern part of Japan , is congenitally deaf.  Her parents sent her to a local school, not to a school for the handicapped, because she then had no trouble to get along with anyone around her.  As she grew proficient in mathematics and science, the little girl thought she would work, in the future, in the field where she could make much of her expertise.

However, Kumi grew up to find there were many difficulties to overcome before she could realize her dream. A pharmacist was her choice, and Kumi thought she should enter a college.  She had a hard time finding a college where she might study, because many colleges that provide pharmaceutical sciences courses showed reluctance to accept people with hearing disabilities.

Meiji Pharmaceutical University was an exception.  The Tokyo-based institution was strongly motivated to give her thoughtful consideration: the assignment of note takers and incidental financial assistance.  They helped the coed pass the National Examination for Pharmacists at her first try in 1998.

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, a famous actress and the hostess interviewer of the TV show, thought that Kumi had finally attained her goal.  There was, however, a still bigger difficulty that Kumi had to face.  It must be hard for most Americans and Europeans to understand it, but the Pharmacists Law of Japan had a “disqualification clause” which did not allow any visually-/hearing- impaired person to work as a pharmacist, saying that it’s too critical for a handicapped druggist to get engaged in a work which directly involves human lives.

She could not help but participate in an affirmative action campaign.  In a brief period of time, Kumi and her fellow activists succeeded in collecting signatures of as many as 2,200,000 people who called for the revision of the discriminatory Law.  This forced the National Diet to delete the ill-famed “disqualification clause” from the Law in 2001.

Kumi could hardly forget the day of July 17 of the same year when she was handed a license of from the Minister of Health, Labor and Welfare, becoming the first licensed deaf pharmacist of Japan –  the profession she had long dreamed of.

Kumi, who now works at one of the leading pharmaceutical houses of Japan , is actively involved in social activities to help disabled kids.  Surrounded by handicapped kids at a school called Free Smile School , instructor Kumi says, “My next goal is to help them become specialists with sophisticated skills who our society actually needs.”