William George Aston

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William George Aston (1841-1911) was a British consular official in Japan and Korea.

Contents 1 Japanology 2 Works 3 See also 4 External links

[edit] Japanology

Aston was also one of the three major British Japanologists active in Japan during the 19th century, along with Ernest Mason Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain. He was the first translator of the Nihongi into English. He lectured to the Asiatic Society of Japan several times.

In 1912 Cambridge University Library acquired 10,000 rare Japanese volumes from the collections of Aston and Ernest Satow which formed the starting point of the Library's vast collection.

[edit] Works

• W. G. Aston 1879, ‘H.M.S. Phaeton at Nagasaki’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan volume 7: pp. 323-336
• W.G. Aston (trans.), Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, London: Kegan Paul 1924. (First published much earlier)

[edit] See also

• Anglo-Japanese relations
• British Japan Consular Service

[edit] External links

• Aston, Cambridge and Korea by Peter Kornicki, on the website of the East Asia Institute at Cambridge University
• The History of Japanese Literature by W.G. Aston (Yokohama: Kelly and Walsh, 1899)