Tetsuko Kuroyanagi

Was expelled from her first primary school at six for disrupting lessons, and her mother took her to Tomoe Gakuen, a school run out of disused railway carriages by a headmaster who listened to her talk for four hours on the first day without interrupting.

Totto-chan is her account of it, published in 1981, and it sold in the millions in Japan and became a standard text on what education can be. The school was destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo in 1945.

Kuroyanagi became Japan's first television star and has hosted the same talk show since 1976. She has served as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador for decades and gave the book's earnings to deaf education.