Japanese at Wellesley and Beyond

Hope Anderson is a class of 1981 Wellesley alumna and founder to the Hope Anderson Fund.

Why did you decide to major in Japanese?

Although initially I thought I might major in English, I vastly preferred the history courses I took freshman year, including one on pre-modern Japanese history taught by Barbara Molony, then a graduate student at Harvard. I took every course she taught during her two years at Wellesley and wrote my senior thesis under her advisement. Prof. Molony encouraged to me to go Harvard my junior year, where I resurrected the Japanese language I’d forgotten in the trauma of leaving Japan at 13. (I grew up in Tokyo, arriving as a baby, and had never lived in the United States until then.) At Harvard I worked as a research assistant to Ezra Vogel, then head of the Japanese Studies program and another mentor. All of this allowed me to reconnect with Japan, a country I love and still consider my home.

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