He spent the academic year 1972-3 as a Japanese Ministry of Education foreign student at Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University) and then returned to Oxford and in 1975 received an MSc in Applied Social Studies. He then moved to St Antony's College, Oxford to begin work on a DPhil on Japanese literature of the Meiji period.
During his time abroad, he studied as a foreign student at Tokyo University of Education (now Tsukuba University) for one academic year, before returning to Oxford and earning an MSc in Applied Social Studies. He then moved to St Antony's College, where he started researching Japanese literature from the Meiji period for his doctoral studies.