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William George Aston (9 April 1841 – 1911) was a British consular official in Japan and Korea. He made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history (Japanology) in the 19th century. The National Portrait Gallery in London has a crayon drawing of Aston by Minnie Agnes Cohen, apparently the only known likeness of him.

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.

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)
• W. G. Aston Shinto, the Way of the Gods, London: Longmans Green and Co. 1905.

Letters to Aston

• Sir Ernest Satow's Private Letters to W.G. Aston and F.V. Dickins edited by Ian Ruxton with an introduction by Peter Kornicki, Lulu Press Inc, December 2007

See also

• The entry about Aston by Joseph Henry Longford in the 1901-11 supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography.
• Anglo-Japanese relations
• British Japan Consular Service

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)

• British people in Japan
• Japanologists
• Japanese–English translators
• 1841 births
• 1911 deaths