Between Time, Between Words

2026/10/31

While I teach English courses at this university, I specialized in American Studies in Japan and History in the United States. One of the catalysts for my path into historical research was an exchange program during my undergraduate years. I spent time at a liberal arts college on the U.S. East Coast, where I had the opportunity to analyze manuscript sources. At that time, I was particularly interested in the history of Christianity, but after subsequently studying abroad for graduate school, I significantly expanded the scope of my research.

One of my current research projects is a legal and cultural history of child immigrants who traveled from Europe to the United States between the late 19th century and the 1920s. For example, as interest in child welfare grew in the West, it became prohibited for immigrant children to cross the Atlantic and enter the U.S. without an adult companion. However, at that time, the use of calendars was limited, and many people did not know exactly when they were born. Therefore, determining who qualified as a "child" was not a simple task. In the book I am currently writing, I discuss how the boundary between children and adults shifted at the U.S. border. In addition to this, I am working on themes I never imagined as an undergraduate, such as Japanese international students in the 19th-century U.S., the history of emotions, the history of zoos, and the history of medical sciences. It is a great joy to deepen my reflections and gain new insights from modest discoveries and chance encounters.

History, which aims to better understand the past, always encourages a dialogue with the present. Furthermore, the content told as "history" changes depending on who is speaking, to whom, in what setting, and in which language. Although I spend a lot of time reading, speaking, and writing in English, my native Japanese is never lost from my thoughts or daily life. Living in the space between multiple languages, constantly surrounded by them, involves various conflicts. I believe that facing those conflicts with sincerity and without flinching is precisely what learning in the Faculty of Letters is all about.