From her home in Boston, Faith Bach says she always wanted to come to Japan. "I don't know why. These things just happen," she said. She was not encouraged by her parents, who "were not in any way interested in Japan." They had bequeathed her in childhood love and understanding of theater, providing training and experience that have stood her in good stead ever since.
Faith left her job in advertising writing, and arrived in Japan on a college exchange program in the 1970s. When she realized it might be possible to stay, she took steps to make Tokyo her home. It still is. She said: "I am happy to be able to get up in the morning and follow my own research and interests. I am lucky to be here. There are many wonderful things to look into, whole fields that I haven't yet touched."
Faith graduated in East Asian studies from Sophia University International Division in 1976. "I had a year of total immersion, of intensive language and culture," she said. "I moved in with some Japanese girls, and used to answer the telephone and things like that." She stayed at Sophia for a postgraduate course in Japanese Buddhism. For a while then she returned to the U.S., where she was assistant instructor in Japanese at the University of Minnesota. At the same time she wrote her thesis on Japanese classics, and earned her MA. By now her astonished parents acknowledged their pride in her, and in her independence and unusual achievements.