William George Aston facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
William George Aston
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William George Aston, 1911
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| Born | 9 April 1841 |
| Died | 22 November 1911 (aged 70) |
| Nationality | Anglo-Irish |
| Occupation | diplomat, educator |
William George Aston CMG (9 April 1841 – 22 November 1911) was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, author and scholar-expert in the language and history of Japan and Korea.
Early life
Aston was born near Derry, Ireland. He distinguished himself at Queen's College, Belfast (now Queen's University Belfast), which he attended 1859–1863. There he received a very thorough philological training in Latin, Greek, French, German and modern history. One of his professors was James McCosh.
Career
Aston was appointed in 1864 student interpreter to the British Legation in Japan. He mastered the theory of the Japanese verb, and in Edo began, with Ernest Mason Satow, those profound researches into the Japanese language which laid the foundations of the critical study of the Japanese language by western scholars. Aston passed the examination for entry to the Consular Service in 1884, and served in the British consular service in Tokyo, Kobe and Nagasaki.
From 1884 to 1885, Aston served as the United Kingdom's consul-general in Korea. He returned to consular duties in Tokyo as Secretary of British Legation in 1885. Aston retired from the foreign service on a pension in 1889 because of ill-health and settled in England. He was appointed CMG in the 1889 Birthday Honours.
Japan
Aston made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century. Along with Ernest Mason Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain, he was one of three major British Japanologists active in Japan during the 19th century.
Aston was the first translator of the Nihongi into the English language (1896). Other publications were two Japanese grammars (1868 and 1872) and A History of Japanese Literature (1899). He lectured to the Asiatic Society of Japan several times, and many of his papers are published in their Transactions.
In 1912 Cambridge University Library acquired 10,000 rare Japanese volumes from the collections of Aston and Satow which formed the starting point of the Library's Japanese collection.
Okamoto Kidō recalls in chapter eleven on the development and adaption of drama of his book, 明治劇談ランプの下にて, Meiji Gekidan Ranpu no Shitanite (On the Theatre of the Meiji Period - Under the Lamp) (in English) meeting Aston at the British Legation...
Korea
In 1884, Aston was the first European diplomatic representative to reside in Korea. Political instability caused him to leave in 1885. In 1885–1887, Aston continued Korean language studies in Tokyo with Kim Chae-guk. This Korean teacher composed a number of stories for Aston to use as practice. Aston donated these manuscript versions of Korean folk tales to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia and they were published in 2004. This part of Aston's personal collection is now preserved in the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.
Later years
After retiring from the consular service, Aston published books on Japanese literature and Japanese religion as well as a number of articles on Korean subjects. He died 22 November 1911 at Beer, Devon. Along with the Japanese books already mentioned Aston's substantial collection of Chinese and Korean books was acquired by Cambridge University Library after his death.
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about William George Aston, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 90+ works in 200+ publications in 4 languages and 3,000+ library holdings.
- 1869 — A Short Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language
- 1872 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language, with a short chrestomathy
- 1877 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language
- 1888 — A Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language
- 1889 — Early Japanese history
- 1896 — Nihongi; Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697
- 1899 — A History of Japanese Literature (available at Wikisource)
- 1899 — Toriwi--its derivation
- 1902 — Littérature japonaise
- 1905 — Shinto, the Way of the Gods.
- 1907 — Shinto, the Ancient Religion of Japan
Articles
- 1879 — "H.M.S. Phaeton at Nagasaki," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 7, pp. 323–336.
See also
- Anglo-Japanese relations
- British Japan Consular Service
- List of ambassadors of the United Kingdom to Korea
