In the past few months, the media has been pleasantly surprised at the sudden ascendancy of some noteworthy Japanese women, mainly in the realm of politics. Since pianist Hiroko Nakamura passed away in July, the media has been filled with obituaries that paid tribute to her own powerful position in Japan's classical music scene some 50 years ago.

Internationally, Seiji Ozawa is a more well-known musician, but his effect on Japan's embrace of Western music is slight compared to Nakamura's — which isn't to say she was a superior artist. She was an excellent technician who didn't make a big impression as a performer abroad, but her ability to communicate what was appealing about so-called serious music at a time when Japanese society was going through huge changes was fortuitous. She deserves credit for sparking the classical music boom that swept Japan in the 1970s and '80s.

Nakamura was born in 1944 to a well-to-do family and attended the Toho Gakuen School of Music, which also produced Ozawa. Even as a child she wanted to be a professional pianist, and she didn't require a lot of encouragement or direction. She won the Japan Music Competition in 1959, and the following year embarked on a world tour with the NHK Symphony Orchestra. In an interview on NHK's tribute to Nakamura, conductor Yuzo Toyama said she was the first Asian solo musician European audiences had ever seen perform European music, adding that they were "shocked" that a Japanese artist could possess the proper sensibility to tackle the Western canon.