When you are doing research on topics related to East Asian languages and literatures, you have extra considerations to keep in mind before you can settle down to do research. Often a couple of searches in Wikipedia will give you the information that you need. 

Romanization conventions:

Chinese: older books written in English will generally use Wade-Giles, some current ones will as well if they focus on Taiwan. Pinyin for most Chinese names and titles. Note that the American libraries didn't convert their catalogs from Wade-Giles to Pinyin until 2000. The third option is Gwoyeu Romatzyh, which was fairly common among sinologists but rarely seen anymore. 

Japanese: use of macrons for long sounds ō.  This is standard practice among Japanese studies scholars who write in English and reflects the romanization rules for the modified Hepburn system. The official system in Japan is kunrei-shiki. There is also a romanization commonly used by people online who follow the keyboard (toukyou) to display long sounds. For example: Hiratsuka Raichō    Hiratuka Raityô  Hiratsuka Raichou 

Korean: There are indeed differences between what libraries in North America use, what scholars use, and the official systems in South Korea and North Korea. This will definitely affect your ability to search for Korean titles and authors. Furthermore, some individuals have personal preferences for how their name is romanized, so you will need to be careful.  

Character sets:

Chinese: simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese

Japanese: Old kanji, new kanji, hiragana (also old and new), katakana 

Korean: hanja, hangul, "Japanese name" 

Ages and Dates: 

Someone's age might be listed in either by the Gregorian dates or the traditional way of adding a year. 

Keep in mind that each of the countries has reign dates as well as the lunar calendar and you might need to convert. 

Names - birth names, pen names, married names, foreign names, Christian names, nicknames.... <sigh> This is particularly complicated if you are working with premodern texts and authors. 

WHEN YOU SEARCH IN WIKIPEDIA, START WITH WHICHEVER LANGUAGE IS EASIER FOR YOU AND THEN CLICK ON THE OTHER LANGUAGE(S) DOWN THE MENU TO THE LEFT TO SEE HOW THE INFORMATION IS PROVIDED IN THAT LANGUAGE. THIS MAKES IT EASY FOR YOU TO GATHER THE NAMES, DATES, AND PLACES YOU NEED FOR SEARCHING. 

And while you are on their English page, check the references and bibliography to see the way scholars write about them (romanization, word division). This is especially useful if there are not full length books about the person you have selected.