PHOTOGRAPHED BY MAKOTO ISHIDA

Satoshi Fukushima was not born into a world of darkness and silence—it closed in on him slowly. At age 3, he lost sight in his right eye to sympathetic ophthalmia, a damaging inflammatory condition. At age 9, glaucoma took the vision from his left eye. A few years later, Fukushima noticed to his horror that his hearing was failing—the tones of the music he loved were gradually fading. By 18, he was deaf.

Marooned in what he has called "fathomless solitude," Fukushima might have abandoned all hope. But his spirit grew instead. "I do not have a particular religious faith," he says, "but I find my existence special. I have been given a kind of a role to play." He has turned in a bravura performance. In 1987 he became the first deaf and blind person in Japan to graduate from college, and he was also the first to earn a graduate degree, in disabled children's education. Two years ago Fukushima broke another barrier—becoming, at 38, the first deaf-blind professor at Tokyo University, Japan's most prestigious institute of higher learning. Along the way he has authored or co-authored a number of books, including a well-received collection of essays and memoirs called An Alien at Watanabe House. Today, Fukushima heads a department at Tokyo University dedicated to removing barriers facing the handicapped.

In a country that has historically marginalized disabled people, Fukushima's high profile as one of Japan's most outspoken agitators for the rights of the disabled has helped break down prejudices. Yet he remains humbled by the sacrifices others have made to help him succeed. His mother pulled him back from despair when, after he lost his hearing, she invented what is now known as finger Braille, a method of conversation through fingertip taps that simulate Braille letters. In college, a volunteer team of finger Braille translators helped him understand lectures.

Fukushima says he has one major goal to accomplish: he wants to establish the Japanese equivalent of the Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, a pioneering educational, research, vocational and rehabilitation center for the deaf-blind in America. He considers it to be the duty of someone with special gifts: "I cannot run away. There is no one else at the moment who can replace me. So I continue to play my role."

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