<p>This is not my field, so my knowledge is limited to listening to history and EALAC students talk. My sense is that 6 months of language study in Tokyo (especially without a formal program) + 2 months of self-study may not be enough to give you a good chance. But it also depends through which department you go.</p>
<p>If you go to a department of East Asian languages and cultures, they’re going to expect language proficiency already. For example, I checked out Princeton’s PhD in East Asian studies and they expect applicants for admission to have at least three academic years of training, or the equivalent, in either Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Columbia’s program says the same. Those are minimums, too - especially for top programs, you will be competing with students who have fluency or at least conversational fluency (or whatever the equivalent is for reading). Also, most programs in East Asian studies departments require you to take a second language as well. For Japanese, that is either a European language (usually French or German) or a second East Asian language, like Chinese or Korean. I’ve heard that it’s not uncommon for strong applicants to have already completed three years of language training for a first language and begun the second language. </p>
<p>A history department will have less strict formal requirements (as in the ones listed on the department’s webpage) but possibly just as strict informal requirements. Most history departments expect you to come in with 2-3 years of training in one foreign language; you’re usually expected to pick up a second in the program. Most successful applicants that I’ve heard from had proficiency in one language already and were working on a second (and sometimes a third) at the time of application. Theoretically, these can be any language. In practice, though, if you are clearly applying to work with an adviser who does East Asian history and express an interest in Japanese history, they’re going to expect proficiency in reading Japanese.</p>
<p>Remember, as a historian you will be expected to do research using primary sources, and if you are doing Japanese history, most of those primary sources will be in Japanese. Depending on the time period in which you are interested, some may be in another language (French, German, possibly Chinese). They want to be sure that you can do this this kind of scholarship, so why would they admit you if you couldn’t do it? Once you were in the program you’d have to take 1-2 years of language classes before you could even begin to do the scholarship in the field or take classes in Japanese - and I’m pretty sure as a doctoral student in an East Asian studies department you would be expected to take some classes in taught in Japanese.</p>
<p>You also have to take language proficiency exams to advance, and those are typically taken in the second year of the program (sometimes you take the first language’s in the first year and the second language’s in the second year, or you take them in your second and third years respectively). 6 months of Japanese before admission won’t be enough for you to pass those reading exams, likely, and you having to take Japanese classes in the first two years will take time away from taking the advanced content classes you need to study Japanese history. It’s nice that your research area is unique, but programs like Princeton and Columbia openly admit that they are getting 600 applications for 20-25 slots. There are probably quite a few students in there with unique research interests.</p>
<p>I’ve read that an intensive immersion program in the country of the language can sometimes be counted as two semesters for every one semester you do - for example, 6 months in Japan in a formally structured intensive language program may be counted as the equivalent of 12 months (or roughly 2-3 semesters) of language training in formal coursework. But that still probably wouldn’t be enough to make you competitive.</p>
<p>As a side note, although you do have experience writing about Japanese politics, do you have experience writing about Japanese history and doing some historical scholarship? I know humanities PhD applicants don’t usually have research experience in the same sense that a STEM or social science student would, but they usually do have experience doing historiography and/or archival research - sometimes assisting a professor, sometimes through an independent study or thesis process. Virtually all history programs will also require an academic writing sample. Do you have that?</p>