To launch its upcoming lecture series, the College Women's Association of Japan invited Kanako Hayashi to give an introductory talk. A persuasive speaker, she has a background of 16 years of inside association with the world of film. As it often happens, chance, good timing and luck played major parts in formulating her career.
Hayashi is a 1985 graduate in philosophy from Sophia University. She still looks barely out of her teens. A film lover, she learned her English from sitting in the dark, watching the screen and listening to the dialogue. Before her graduation, she wrote a letter to Kashiko Kawakita, to whom she refers as the godmother of film.
In their work from the 1920s, the husband-and-wife team Nagamasa and Kashiko Kawakita pioneered bringing foreign films to Japan, and taking Japanese films abroad. On receiving Hayashi's letter, Kashiko Kawakita invited her for an interview. Hayashi took her first step into the film world when she was given the chance to join the Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, which had been set up in tribute to Nagamasa after his death.
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