Hiraku Shimoda was born in Japan and grew up on Long Island. He received his B.A. in Asian Studies from Vassar and M.A. and Ph.D in Japanese History from Harvard. His specialization is in early modern (1600-1868) and modern (1868-) Japanese history. His research focuses on regional history, specifically Aizu domain, a region in northern Japan with a history of antagonism against the central government. He is interested in problems related to nation-state formation such as the relationship between locality and nationhood, language policy, and war memory.

Before returning to Vassar as an Assistant Professor, Shimoda was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard and an adjunct lecturer in the History Faculty at MIT and the Asian Studies Program at Vassar. His past research includes work on a local merchant in nineteenth-century Japan ("Bad Fish or Bad Merchant," Modern Asian Studies, 35:3, 2001) and abandoned Japanese war orphans in northern China. He is a member of the History Department and teaches Japanese, Chinese, and East Asian history.