- Basil Hall Chamberlain
Basil Hall Chamberlain (
18 October 1850 –15 February 1935 ), was a professor ofTokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active inJapan during the late 19th century. (Others included E. M. Satow and W. G. Aston.) He also wrote some of the earliest translations ofhaiku 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 (next toPortsmouth ), the son of an AdmiralWilliam Charles Chamberlain and his wife Eliza Hall, the daughter of the travel writerBasil Hall . He was brought up in French as well as English, even before moving toVersailles to live with his maternal grandmother in 1856 upon his mother's death. Once in France he acquired German as well. Chamberlain had hoped to study at Oxford, but instead started work atBarings Bank inLondon . 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, with no clear destination in mind.Japan
Chamberlain landed in Japan on
29 May 1873 . He taught at theImperial Naval School inTokyo from 1874 to 1882. His most important position, however, was as professor of Japanese atTokyo 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 andRyukyuan languages .) His many works include the first translation of the "Kojiki " 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 , but the two became somewhat estranged. His younger brother wasHouston Stewart Chamberlain .ee also
*
Anglo-Japanese relations
*O-yatoi gaikokujin 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.
*"Bashō 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. [http://hoary.org/scand/invent.html web page] , [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2510 plain text] Incorporated within "Things Japanese" from 1927.
*"Huit Siècles de poesie française." 1927.
*". . . encore est vive la Souris." 1933.Further reading
*Ōta, Yūzō, "Basil Hall Chamberlain: Portrait of a Japanologist" (1998)
External links
*
* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/kj/index.htm Chamberlain's translation of the Kojiki]
* [http://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/index.htm Chamberlain's collection of Ainu folk tales]
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