Japanese studies personal statement example

Why do you want to study this course or subject?

I started reading Japanese fiction in translation because the library's world literature shelf was next to the history section I was already raiding for coursework. Kawabata's Snow Country struck me first for how little it explained: the reader is expected to sit with silences and seasonal detail rather than be told what a scene means. Later I read parts of Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book in translation and was surprised by how modern the lists of irritations felt, and how much I was missing about court hierarchy and the calendar that shaped them. That gap is what pulled me towards Japanese studies rather than simply reading more novels. I wanted to understand the society behind the text, not only the text. Reading about the Meiji period for my own interest showed me how quickly institutions, dress, law and education were remade, and how contested that process was at the time rather than the tidy story of modernisation I had assumed. Studying the language alongside history, politics and culture seems to me the only honest way to approach any of it, because so much depends on what a word carries that a translation must flatten. I am also drawn to the discipline of close reading, which my English A-level has trained, applied to sources I cannot yet read unaided. I would like to reach the point where I can work with Japanese material directly, and where my judgements about Japan rest on evidence rather than on what has been selected for export.

How have your qualifications and studies helped you to prepare?

History has given me the largest part of my preparation. My coursework on interwar international relations required me to weigh contradictory accounts of the same conference and to account for the interests of the people producing each document, which I expect to be central to studying another country's historiography. English Literature has taught me to build an argument from textual detail and to be careful about what a translator's choices are doing; comparing two English versions of the same haiku for an enrichment presentation made that concrete, since one preserved the syllable pattern and lost the image while the other did the reverse. Geography contributes something different but useful: work on urbanisation and ageing populations gave me a framework for reading about depopulation in rural Japanese prefectures, and taught me to be sceptical of single statistics presented without context. Outside timetabled lessons I attend a Tuesday evening community class working towards JLPT N5. I can read hiragana and katakana confidently, I know around two hundred kanji, and I can manage short self-introductions and simple past-tense sentences, though listening at natural speed still defeats me. I use flashcards on the bus and write a few lines of diary in Japanese most days, mostly about weather and food because that is where my vocabulary is strongest. I have learned that steady daily work suits language study far better than long weekend sessions.

What else have you done to prepare outside of education, and why are these experiences useful?

On Saturdays I help my father in his hardware shop, doing stocktaking, updating the supplier spreadsheet and serving customers. It is unglamorous work, but it has made me methodical about records and comfortable asking people what they actually need rather than assuming. Explaining to an impatient customer why a particular fixing will not hold has improved my patience more than any exercise at school. I also handle the invoices for our trade accounts, which means checking figures carefully when I would rather be finished for the day. My main hobby is brush lettering. I began with English calligraphy and moved on to practising kana with a brush pen after finding a beginner's guide online. Copying the same character forty times is a slow, quiet activity that has taught me to notice stroke order and proportion, and it has made kanji learning less intimidating because I now think about characters as sequences of movements rather than pictures. I sing second alto in a community choir, where we learn pieces in languages none of us speaks and rely on transliteration and repetition; it has made me less embarrassed about pronouncing things imperfectly in front of others. I volunteer at the choir's termly concerts, setting out chairs and running the raffle table. Together these commitments have taught me to manage a week with fixed obligations in it, which I think will matter in a degree that requires daily language practice alongside reading.

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