Fukuyama makes the news almost every year with his prolific authoring of books that cover various topics, most famously, "The End of History."
Quote:
His solitary upbringing was intense, academic and culturally complex. He was born in 1952. His paternal grandfather emigrated from Japan to Los Angeles in 1905 to avoid being conscripted in the Russo-Japanese war. His father was born in Los Angeles, his mother arrived in the United States in 1949, and the family settled in New York.He has a few relations in Japan, but no real connections. He does not speak the language. His parents did, but only when they wanted to hide something from him, a poignant emblem of deracination and concealment.
In New York, he went to a private school where most of the other children were Jewish - again, he was a loner.
He seems to have been hothoused intellectually. Both sides of his family were academic and his father had become a Congregationalist minister and acquired a PhD in sociology.
The whole profile is pretty interesting. I'm of the school of thought that says that who your parents are and how you were raised makes a big difference in the person you become, so it is always enlightening to read about the backgrounds of various famous Japanese and Japanese-Americans.
America's most famous THINKER [straitstimes.asia1.com.sg]
