[3] He was educated at the Fukushima-ken Jinjo School in Fukushima Prefecture and at Waseda University in Tokyo before he traveled to the United States to study at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

[7] In 1907, Asakawa was appointed curator of the East Asian Collection at Yale's Sterling Memorial Library.

[citation needed] After the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Asakawa began to speak out against the growth of militarism in Japan.

He dedicated himself to serving as a bridge between the United States and Japan to promote amicable relations.

In 1941, he sought to avert war between Japan and the United States by trying to convince President Roosevelt to reach out to the Japanese emperor with a personal telegram.

She met Asakawa when he was a doctoral student at Yale University after graduating from Dartmouth College in 1899 with a Bachelor of Letters degree.