Born February 18, 1933

Tokyo, Japan

Artist, writer, and performer

Yoko Ono. © Michael S. Yamashita/Corbis.

"When I first came out there was a lot of xenophobia [fear of foreigners] and suspicion because I was an Oriental woman standing with John [Lennon]. It scared people, and I understood that in some way. Now I'm 70, and people could say 'She's old' and be intolerant, but they haven't…. It's nice not to feel like an outsider. It's opened my life up."

When Yoko Ono turned seventy in 2003, she was enjoying more popular and critical respect than at any time during her more than forty years as an artist. A large retrospective exhibit of her artwork, called Transmodern Yoko, was on a world tour. Songs she released twenty years earlier had been remixed by contemporary artists and were playing regularly at dance clubs. "People think that their world will get...