In 2014 I received a doctoral degree in East Asian studies from New York University. My research focused on a key figure in Japanese history, Nakajima Shōen. She was using the name Kishida Toshiko when she made history as a speechmaker for women’s rights in the early 1880s. Nakajima was the surname of her husband, Nakajima Nobuyuki, the first speaker of the house in the Japanese Diet. She adopted Shōen as a kind of pen name. After her marriage, she published many pieces in the women’s education magazine Jogaku zasshi. Also in that journal she published an adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Eugene Aram, entitled Zen’aku no chimata. She later published an autobiographical novella, Sankan no meika. My dissertation examines the latter two works. In 2018 my English translation of the novella received the Kyoko Iriye Selden Memorial Translation Prize. At present I am translating Shoen’s diaries into English.