William Elliot Griffis

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William Elliot Griffis, D.D., L.H.D. (17 September 1843 – 1928) was an American orientalist, author and Congregational preacher.

He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as the son of a coal trader and a Sunday school teacher. After graduating from high school he took a job in the jewelry business. Griffis joined the 44th Pennsylvania Volunteers regiment after Robert E. Lee invaded Pennsylvania in 1863. In 1865 he entered Rutgers University to study for the ministry. Here Griffis was an English and Latin tutor for Taro Kusakabe , a young samurai from the province of Echizen (part of modern Fukui). After gratuating from Rutgers in 1869, Griffis earned his M.A. at New Brunswick Theological Seminary.

In September 1870 Griffis was invited to Japan by Matsudaira Shungaku, for the purpose of organizing schools along Western lines. Until 1872 he served as superintendent of education in the province of Echizen, for which he was provided with a salary of $2,400, a house and a horse. In 1872 Griffis was appointed as the chair of physics at Kaisei Gakko (forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University). He prepared the New Japan Series of reading and spelling books and primers for Japanese students in the English language and contributed to the Japanese press and to newspapers and magazines in the United States numerous papers of importance on Japanese affairs. He was the only foreign member of Mori Arinori's Meirokusha intellectual society. In Tokyo he was joined by his sister, Margaret Clark Griffis, who became a teacher at the Tokyo Government Girls' School (later to become the Peeresses' School). By the time they left Japan in 1874, W. E. Griffis had befriended many of Japan's future leaders.

Having returned to the United States, he went on to further pursue his studies for the ministry, graduating from Union Theological Seminary in 1877. In 1884 he earned his D.D. from Union College. He served as pastor of the First Reformed Church, Schenectady, New York (1877-1886), Shawmut Congregational Church, Boston, Massachusetts (1886-1893), and the First Congregational Church, Ithaca, New York (1893-1903). In 1903 he resigned from the active ministry to devote himself exclusively to authorship and lecturing. he published 18 books on Japan and Japanese culture, wrote several hundred articles, and made numerous public lectures. He also cooperated with Inazo Nitobe in writing the classic Bushido: The Soul of Japan.

It wasn't just Japan and the Orient he was interested in, in his lifetime Griffis travelled to Europe 11 times, mainly to the Netherlands. He was a member of the committee of the Boston Congregational Club to erect a Pilgrim memorial at Delfshaven, the Netherlands in 1909. In 1926 he returned to Japan to receive the Order of the Rising Sun. He died in 1928.

William Elliot Griffis fathered a son, Stanton Griffis, who would become U.S. Ambassador to Spain and Argentina.