About

The specialized study of Japanese history at Yale began in earnest in 1899, when a young man named Kan’ichi Asakawa, originally from Fukushima Prefecture, arrived to commence work on his Ph.D. Later appointed to the faculty, Asakawa would spend more than four decades in New Haven, building one of North America’s most important library collections and working tirelessly to integrate the study of East Asia into the mainstream of the Western historical profession.

Today, more than a hundred and twenty years after Asakawa’s arrival at Yale, we continue to draw inspiration from his contributions, and those of the other distinguished scholars who followed him, while also seeking to reimagine the field and its possibilities for the 21st century.