1978

I received my Ph.D. in sociology of Berkeley in 1986 working with Harold Wilensky, the late Reinhard Bendix, Neil Smelser, Claude Fischer and Michael Wiseman (economics). I was a post-doctoral fellow at Michigan State University, served on the faculty of Duke University for nine years, and have been at the University of Kentucky for the last fifteen years. 

1978: I arrive at Berkeley, 21 years old, with little cultural capital, some political idealism, and the shakiest hopes of succeeding in graduate school. I relied throughout on Michael Burawoy and Arlie Hochschild and my warm, funny, brilliant fellow students for the recognition to reimagine myself. I became set on showing that the social world too could be reimagined.

Doing graduate work at Berkeley was a positive experience for a number of reasons, including the cultural richness of the Bay Area, the brilliant and dedicated students, the renowned faculty, and a policy that encouraged students to develop their own intellectual agendas. In addition to taking courses in sociology, I spent a lot of time outside of the Department.

I have been engaged in teaching, research, creating, and beyond at University of Shizuoka in Japan since 1987. I owe a lot to Berkeley, so that I have contributed donations to I-House and UC Alumni Association almost every year. I am most grateful to late Professor John A. Clausen, my thesis advisor as well as ex-head of the Institute of Human Development. I translated his book, Sociology of the Lifecourse, into Japanese in 1987, and it is now the sixth printing. I visited him at home or in his office whenever I visited Berkeley and we had a good time.

When I came to Berkeley in 1969, I was one of two or three students NOT given any financial assistance -- my academic record at Harvard was that bad! In fact, I was fortunate simply to have been admitted. My first two years at Berkeley revolved mainly around becoming a true Marxist intellectual, learning as much from Fred Block and the journal then called "Socialist Revolution" (later "Socialist Review") as from my courses.