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Everything has risk and there are lots of people now who took safer options with their career who are now starting all over again after 20 plus years of working. I might have been financially better off if I hadn’t taken such a meandering path through education/careers/countries but I don’t think that would have offset the fun I had doing it, and I’m doing fine now.

As far as being employable in the corporate world there’s lots of potential as long as you know how to sell the skills they will find useful. Lots of historians do serious statistical analysis, always a good skill. Other options include employment by companies that deal with Taiwan/China/Japan where they need the expertise of someone who can explain why certain western behaviours might not work and what to expect in return. Cross cultural business negotiations are fun. Writing skills, business analysis (granted this usually requires some domain knowledge, however, many places let people learn on the job). Not to mention language skills – having english, chinese and japanese all in the one person.

“Considering the economy I almost don’t see how it couldn’t be better by the time I have a PhD.”

Very likely. Or else civilisation will collapse and we’ll all trade in our PhDs for a stone spear. But what the hell – if all else fails, you still get to be called “Dr” Berman*.....
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*M-Bone is right about it not actually being worth paying for, though. Rule of Acquisition 109: “Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.”

“you are in a very niche part of that market, which is low-supply and low-demand. Since you are in such a specialized field, if you were interested you could probably do a fairly comprehensive review of your potential job prospects.”
Well, this blog post is rather un-transparently the initial foray into that.

Jade: I didn’t know that you had ever tried to go into academia as a profession. Would you mind talking a bit more about that, as much as anonymity allows? Or if you want to skip anonymity, then email me directly?

“Oh, and if you don’t already, read “Piled Higher and Deeper” comics to get the real dirt….”
Actually never saw that comic, but I’ll bookmark it now. I read a lot of webcomics back when I worked at the campus computer lab and such in like 2000-2002 but since then have mainly stuck to comics that appear on paper at some point.

“But first try to get into the biggest-name grad school you can in the US: a PhD from Yalevard is much more impressive than one from New Jersey Polytechnic. Yeah, it’s disgusting snobbery, but it does tend to work. Especially if your publications are weak (and rather than six to a dozen in minor journals no one has ever heard of, aim for a few but in as high a class as you can manage).”
While waiting for the reply from the Monbusho people I applied to PhD programs at Harvard, Columbia and Chicago and MA programs at several other places. All the MAs let me in but offered no definite money at that time, Harvard just sent a form rejection, Chicago offered me a 1 year MA instead (with no money) and one prof at Columbia called me to come in and then said I made it to the final round but didn’t get in. I would hope that an MA from Kyodai and a good thesis will seal the deal pretty easily next time.

“Why pay someone who will essentially work for room and board the same kind of money as you would pay to someone who only works for the money?”
No way in hell would I pay to go to grad school, unless it was for an MBA or law degree. I study on the dime of the Japanese government.

“take a China field, even if your research has nothing to do with China, because the vast majority of jobs will require teaching in that area; get some experience with World History surveys—they always need TAs and adjuncts—because you’re likely going to be doing that, too, or at least an East Asian survey of some kind.”

Luckily, I was planning on taking a China field anyway, due to my own interest. Even though my present qualifications and study so far is VERY heavily slanted towards Japan, Taiwan is probably the single country whose history interests me both which by itself basically requires both Japanese and Chinese history fields, and I’m also becoming quite interested in Chinese history in its own right. The recommendation to try and do some teaching in world history surveys is quite a good one though. It’s nice to hear from one of the academics who currently has a teaching job!

However, the doom and gloom stories are all true. In many fields of history and English – only 50% of PhD students ever finish. Of those, only 50% get tenure track jobs. Many of those jobs are in community colleges in the deep South. It’s a hard world. I’d estimate that each year there are only about 70 decent jobs for Asian historians in the English speaking world. Of those, probably about 40 would be modern and have some potential fit with your specialty.

The default advice that profs give to prospective grad students now is “don’t do it”.

You, however, have a number of advantages – - Funding attracts funding so your current Monbusho is likely to net you another scholarship for your PhD. Don’t, under any circumstances, do a PhD unless they fund you. A lawyer can afford to get out with $75,000 debt and still have a life. As a history prof, you could start at as little as $40,000 (even at a top 20 program) and that debt would be hanging over you for 10 years (2027!). – You know Japanese and Chinese. This gives puts you in a tiny minority among Asianists and will increase your marketability. A Taiwan only focus could actually end up being bad for you – many places that advertise for China want a mainland China historian because it is a butts in seats popular with students area. – You write a lot already – I think that you can get stuff in peer reviewed journals (we have already talked about this). I would aim for 6 or so by 2017 (!?). – You can look for jobs in Japan and the English-speaking world.

Also – - Count on at least 5 years for your PhD. Some programs won’t let you graduate earlier. – Decide right now what type of school that you want to end up at. You need to tailor your resume to either SLAC (selective liberal arts college), R2 (large state school), R1 (think UCLA or Wisconsin Madison), or Ivy. Keep in mind that Ivy league schools will hire 4 people and tenure 1. You could count on ulcers until 2025.

Curzon’s advice is very good, but needs to be tailored to the university job search. If you send your resume to a university that is not running a job search, it likely will not make it out of HR or past the departmental assistant (profs do all of the hiring). The key is networking at conferences (although don’t get hooked on doing lots of conference presentations, they are worthless compared to peer reviewed articles) and getting a powerful advisor to write strong letters of recommendation for you. Also, when job search season is on, you have to be ready to send out 100 applications – each tailored specifically to the institution that you are applying to. This will be a full time job for months and has to be factored into your PhD completion time.

Adamu’s advice is very good. It will be the infamous academic job interview that gets you the job in the end. I’m not sure that any other normal (not, say, baseball or something) job in the world has a process so gruelling. Think 1 or 2, 2-3 hour presentation and question and answer sessions where experts will seek to brutalize you on the most esoteric aspects of your research, a mock lecture before apathetic students, and basically having to be on point through interviews with department heads, deans, provosts, etc. for 2 full days. In the end, they will not only be voting on your potential as a researcher, but (and this is a far bigger factor than in private industry because of tenure) whether they want to have an office next door to yours for the next FORTY years. If you are too assertive, they could brand you an @$$hole and decide to take the second or third best researcher because he/she will be more fun to have around.

The most important thing to keep in mind (and this can be scary) – when you finally do get a job, you will have beaten out 100-200 other applicants – all smart, all ambitious, all with publications, many with Ivy degrees, many, in fact, with credentials not that different from your own. Do you see yourself winning a Battle Royale like this? Being able to imagine yourself as the last man standing is an important step.

For employability purposes, here’s my recommendation: take a China field, even if your research has nothing to do with China, because the vast majority of jobs will require teaching in that area; get some experience with World History surveys—they always need TAs and adjuncts—because you’re likely going to be doing that, too, or at least an East Asian survey of some kind.

Then, if you get one of the three or four straight-up Japan jobs in the year you go on the market, you can write me back and say how I wasted your time. But if you get one of the two dozen or more East Asia or Asia+World jobs, you’ll be in good shape.

One reason for this, I like to think, is that these are people who actually went so far as to pay others for the chance to do research (in grad school). Why pay someone who will essentially work for room and board the same kind of money as you would pay to someone who only works for the money? After all, if you wanted to do it, you wouldn’t need to get paid….