Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka

A specialist in the history of modern Japan, Yoshihisa Tak Matsusaka is an Assistant Professor of History at Wellesley College. He has been a member of the faculty since 1993.

Professor Matsusaka graduated with a B.A. in Biology from Brandeis University in 1975. He received an M.A. in Regional Studies-East Asia (1986) and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages (1993) from Harvard University. Grants awarded in support of his research include a Fulbright-Hays DDRA, a Whiting Fellowship and an NEH fellowship. He has been a Research Associate at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard since 1994.

Matsusaka's forthcoming book entitled The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932 (Harvard, 2000), explores the history of Japan's subjugation of Northeast China, from the establishment of the South Manchuria Railway Company to the founding of Manchoukuo. He has contributed a chapter to Japan's Wartime Empire (Duus, Myers and Peattie, eds., Princeton, 1995) and has presented a number of papers at the Association for Asian Studies and the Reischauer Institute's Japan Forum. His current research project deals with the politics of national defense in Japan from the 1880s to the early 1930s.

Profile last updated: 11/01

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Last Modified: May 1, 2002