This past summer I went to Richmond, Virginia to research the history of the China's Children Fund, an organization that built and operated more than 40 orphanages in China between 1938 and 1950. Among my discoveries was that when the organization was forced to leave China in 1950 (shortly after the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949), it opened an office in Japan and began constructing orphanages there. These orphanages mostly cared for the children of Japanese women with U.S. military men, many of whom were unable to provide for the children after their American fathers returned home (and, in certain cases, stopped providing financial support). I found what is likely a rich set of unexamined primary sources documenting this phenomenon, but I couldn't read them because they were in Japanese!
This provides one concrete example in which learning to read Japanese sources could aid me in my historical research, and allow me to explore transnational historical connections between China, the United States, and Japan in a way that I simply cannot without learning Japanese. While my research focuses on the cultural history of U.S.-China relations, I have learned that this is a story that often includes Japan, and that therefore I need to learn to read Japanese in order to fully pursue my research. Moreover, much excellent historiography on modern Chinese and international history is written by Japanese scholars, and learning Japanese will allow me to learn from and engage with their research.
