In 2005, Ms. Fukumoto won her first championship in the recital division of the NHK Nationwide University Students Broadcasting Contest. The piece she performed was a monologue telling the story of a man who suffered through the Second World War. “Until then, I had been choosing pieces with female characters that match the nature of my voice. It was such a huge challenge that in my early days I could never imagine it happening,” Ms. Fukumoto told us as she looked back on that competition. When she was the chairperson of the broadcasting club in her high school, she would ask club members to cast characters that suited their voices, but despite winning many prizes in announcement competitions, Ms. Fukumoto couldn't attain her own target in the field of recital. “I was somehow feeling anxious, because I thought there would be nothing left if I didn’t do well in my voice career. But this idea was very much softened when I joined the musical club at Waseda. I learned the importance of listening to others by living in the warm family environment of our club members,” she said.

As if she enjoyed extending her range of expression, Ms. Fukumoto chose to perform “Girls' Blue,” a novel by Atsuko Asano, in the “Recital Day” Summer Special Performance back in 2006. “It was a recitation event with many senior citizens attending. Some performers chose pieces that were relatively hard to understand, but I thought it would be great if I could read something that I have a lot of empathy with,” Ms. Fukumoto explained. Unlike her performances in the contests, she read aloud in a way that truly expressed her youth. Some members of the audience said later that they shed tears as she brought them back to their younger days.

Surprisingly, Ms. Fukumoto didn’t choose recitation or announcing as a career. Instead, after she graduates, she is entering a temping agency that specializes in medical workers. She said this is because she found the position of “Consultant” interesting, since she could face people directly and guide them in a better direction. “I think it’s better for me to support others than stand at the top. Speaking of which, the role I played in the JMS musical ‘Little Women,’ Meg, is also someone who supports others. In her case, she was trying to bring together the tomboyish second daughter, the shy third daughter, and the precocious fourth daughter. Since my name also contains the letters MEG, I might simply be inheriting some of her character,” she winked. It was a tough decision for Ms. Fukumoto to choose a job that is completely different from what she has been working on for years, but she smiled and said: “I can continue my vocal exercises even when I’m on my own. By the way, a senior at Waseda once advised me that it might be a good idea to prepare my own business cards even while I was a student, since you never know who you’re going to meet. I took this as advice about staying proactive at any given time,” she added. Her energetic facial expression told us that she has no fear about looking into different kinds of universe that are still unknown to her.