As a child, Wishma Rathnayake was fascinated with “Oshin,” a popular 1980s’ television drama about a young girl who rises from poverty to head a Japanese supermarket chain. Urged by her father to emulate her hero, Rathnayake started learning Japanese with a dream of one day moving to Japan from the small Sri Lankan town of Gampaha, northeast of Colombo. When her father died, the university graduat
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