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Basil Hall Chamberlain (18 October 1850–15 February 1935), was a professor of Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British
Great Britain

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the List of islands by area, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is List of islands by population....
 Japanologists
Japanology

Japanese Studies is a term generally used in Europe to describe the historical and cultural study of Japan; in North America, the academic field is usually referred to as Japanese studies, which includes contemporary social sciences as well as classical humanistic fields....
 active in Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 during the late 19th century. (Others included E. M. Satow
Ernest Mason Satow

Sir Ernest Mason Satow Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Order of St. Michael and St. George, , known in Japan as "" , known in China as "???" or "???", was an outstanding Great Britain scholar, diplomat and Japanologist born to an ethnically German father and an English mother in Upper Clapton, North London....
 and W. G. Aston
William George Aston

William George Aston was a Great Britain consular official in Japan and Korea. He made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century....
.) He also wrote some of the earliest translations of haiku
Haiku

' ', plural haiku, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 Mora e , in three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 morae respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura....
 into English. He is perhaps best remembered for his informal and popular one-volume encyclopedia Things Japanese, which first appeared in 1890 and which he revised several times thereafter.






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Basil Hall Chamberlain (18 October 1850–15 February 1935), was a professor of Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British
Great Britain

Great Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the List of islands by area, and the largest in Europe. With a population of 58.9 million people it is List of islands by population....
 Japanologists
Japanology

Japanese Studies is a term generally used in Europe to describe the historical and cultural study of Japan; in North America, the academic field is usually referred to as Japanese studies, which includes contemporary social sciences as well as classical humanistic fields....
 active in Japan
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 during the late 19th century. (Others included E. M. Satow
Ernest Mason Satow

Sir Ernest Mason Satow Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Order of St. Michael and St. George, , known in Japan as "" , known in China as "???" or "???", was an outstanding Great Britain scholar, diplomat and Japanologist born to an ethnically German father and an English mother in Upper Clapton, North London....
 and W. G. Aston
William George Aston

William George Aston was a Great Britain consular official in Japan and Korea. He made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century....
.) He also wrote some of the earliest translations of haiku
Haiku

' ', plural haiku, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 Mora e , in three metrical phrases of 5, 7 and 5 morae respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura....
 into English. He is perhaps best remembered for his informal and popular one-volume encyclopedia Things Japanese, which first appeared in 1890 and which he revised several times thereafter. His interests were diverse, and his works included a volume of poetry in French.

Early life

Chamberlain was born in Southsea
Southsea

Southsea is a seaside resort located in Portsmouth at the southern end of Portsea Island in the county of Hampshire in England. The built up areas of Portsmouth and Southsea have merged, and the centre of Southsea is within a mile of Portsmouth's city centre....
 (next to Portsmouth
Portsmouth

Portsmouth city status in the United Kingdom located in the Counties of England of Hampshire on the south coast of England. Portsmouth is the UK's only island city and is located on Portsea Island....
), the son of an Admiral William Charles Chamberlain
William Charles Chamberlain

William Charles Chamberlain was a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy, and sometime Superintendent at the dockyard, HMNB Devonport.He was the eldest son of the diplomat Sir Henry Chamberlain, 1st Baronet, by his second wife Anne Eugenia n?e Morgan....
 and his wife Eliza Hall, the daughter of the travel writer Basil Hall
Basil Hall

Basil Hall was a United Kingdom naval officer from Scotland, a traveller, and an author. He was the second son of Sir James Hall, 4th Baronet, an eminent man of science....
. He was brought up in French as well as English, even before moving to Versailles
Versailles

Versailles , formerly de facto capital of the kingdom of France, is now a wealthy suburb of Paris and is still an important administrative and judicial centre....
 to live with his maternal grandmother in 1856 upon his mother's death. Once in France he acquired German
German language

German is a West Germanic languages, thus related to and classified alongside English language and Dutch language. It is one of the world's world language and the most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union....
 as well. Chamberlain had hoped to study at Oxford
University of Oxford

The University of Oxford , located in the city of Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation in the English-speaking world....
, but instead started work at Barings Bank
Barings Bank

Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in London until its collapse in 1995 after one of the bank's employees, Nick Leeson, lost ?827 million speculating—primarily on futures contracts....
 in London
London

London is the capital of both England and the United Kingdom, and the most populous municipality in the European Union. An important settlement for two millennia, History of London goes back to its founding by the Roman Empire....
. He was unsuited to the work and soon had a nervous breakdown. It was in the hope of a full recovery that he sailed out of Britain
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, with no clear destination in mind.

Japan

Chamberlain landed in Japan on 29 May 1873. He taught at the Imperial Naval School in Tokyo
Tokyo

, officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan of Japan and located on the eastern side of the main island Honshu. The twenty-three special wards of Tokyo, each governed as a city, cover the area that was once the Tokyo City in the eastern part of the prefecture, and total over 8 million people....
 from 1874 to 1882. His most important position, however, was as professor of Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
 at Tokyo Imperial University beginning in 1886. It was here that he gained his reputation as a student of Japanese language and literature. (He was also a pioneering scholar of the Ainu
Ainu language

Hokkaido Ainu is an Ainu languages spoken by members of the Ainu people ethnic group on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.Until the twentieth century, Ainu languages were also spoken throughout the southern half of the island of Sakhalin and by small numbers of people in the Kuril Islands....
 and Ryukyuan languages
Ryukyuan languages

The Ryukyuan languages are spoken in the Ryukyu Islands, and make up a subfamily of the Japonic languages language family.The Ryukyuan languages and Japanese diverged "not long before the first written evidences of Japanese appeared, that is to say, at some point before the 7th century"....
.) His many works include the first translation of the Kojiki
Kojiki

, is the oldest surviving book in Japan. The body of the Kojiki is written in Chinese language, but it includes numerous Japanese names and some phrases....
 into English (1882), A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (1888), Things Japanese (1890), and A Practical Guide to the Study of Japanese Writing (1905). A keen traveller despite chronic weak health, he cowrote (with W. B. Mason) the 1891 edition of A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, of which revisions appeared later.

Chamberlain was a friend of Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn

Patrick Lafcadio Hearn , also known as after gaining Japanese citizenship, was an author, best known for his books about Japan. He is especially well-known for his collections of Japanese legends and kwaidan, such as Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things....
, but the two became somewhat estranged. His younger brother was Houston Stewart Chamberlain
Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a Great Britain-born author of books on political philosophy, natural science and his posthumous father-in-law Richard Wagner....
.

See also

  • Anglo-Japanese relations
    Anglo-Japanese relations

    This page describes the history of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Japan. This began in 1600 with the arrival of William Adams on the shores of Kyushu at Usuki, Oita in Oita Prefecture....
  • O-yatoi gaikokujin
    O-yatoi gaikokujin

    The oyatoi gaikokujin -- sometimes rendered o-yatoi gaikokujin in romaji, were foreign advisors hired by the Japanese government for their specialized knowledge to assist in the modernization of Japan at the end of the Bakufu and during the Meiji Era....


Works by Chamberlain

  • The Classical Poetry of the Japanese. 1880.
  • A Translation of the 'Ko-Ji-Ki'. 1883.
  • The Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan Viewed in the Light of Aino Studies. 1887.
  • Aino Folk-Tales. 1888.
  • A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese. 1887.
  • Things Japanese. Six editions, 1890–1936. (A later paperback reprint of the fifth, 1905 edition — with the short bibliographies appended to many of its articles replaced by mentions of other books put out by the new publisher — was issued as Japanese Things.)
  • A Handbook for Travellers in Japan. 3rd ed. 1891. Cowritten with W. B. Mason. (Earlier editions were not by Chamberlain.)
  • Essay in aid of a grammar and dictionary of the Luchuan language. 1895.
  • "Basho and the Japanese Poetical Epigram." Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 2, no. 30, 1902 (some of his translations are included in Faubion Bowers' "The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology", Dover Publications, 1996, 78pp. ISBN 0-486-29274-6)
  • Japanese Poetry. 1910.
  • The Invention of a New Religion. 1912. , Incorporated within Things Japanese from 1927.
  • Huit Siècles de poesie française. 1927.
  • . . . encore est vive la Souris. 1933.


Further reading

  • Ota, Yuzo, Basil Hall Chamberlain: Portrait of a Japanologist (1998)


External links