I wish that my reasons for studying Japanese were simple--something benign, like wanting to speak to my Japanese friend's grandmother, or be more polite whenever I eat at a ramen shop. While I should be happy that my interest in the language and culture of Japan extends beyond the cliches and dubious usefulness of anime and manga, if this were the case, it would certainly make explaining my reasoning less time-consuming. With neither of those being the case, my logic is as follows. Despite spending almost a year at the American School in Tokyo, my knowledge of the Japanese language is tenuous, at best. For all intents and purposes, I existed in an English-speaking bubble, despite living in a foreign nation with one of the most distinct linguistic systems on Earth. At the time, my interest in Japanese culture and history was minimal; my chiefest academic interests were in American and Western history. Yet, as years went by, and my personal course of historical study widened in b...