John William Fenton

John William Fenton (12 March 1828 or 1831 – 28 April 1890) was a British musician and the leader of a British military band in Japan at the start of the Meiji period. He is considered "the first bandmaster in Japan" and "the father of band music in Japan". Fenton is best known for having initiated the process through which Kimigayo came to be accepted as the national anthem of Japan.

Fenton was born in Kinsale, County Cork, in Ireland in 1828 He died in California.

Bandmaster in Japan Fenton, bandmaster of Britain's 10th Regiment of Foot, 1st Battalion, arrived in Japan in 1868. The battalion had been sent to protect the small foreign community in Yokohama during the transitional period at the end of the Tokugawa shogunate and the early years of the Meiji Restoration. The melody was composed and was performed before the Emperor in 1870. In 1879–1880, Franz Eckert, a German musician and foreign advisor, adapted the melody using Western style harmonies. The version developed by Eckert using Fenton's and Hayashi's themes became the second and current version of Kimigayo. The harmonisation and orchestration of Kimigayo is the combined work of these influential bandmasters.

Later years Fenton's regiment left Japan in 1871, but he stayed for a further six years as a bandmaster with the newly formed Japanese navy and then the band of the imperial court. The cost of his salary during this period was shared by the navy and by the Imperial Palace Music Department (Gagaku bureau).

Fenton's first wife, Annie Maria, died in 1871 aged 40; her grave is in Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery. He married Jane Pilkington in 1872. They left Japan in April 1877, sailing to San Francisco.

The 1881 United Kingdom census records Fenton ("bandmaster pensioner", aged 50) living in Montrose, Scotland, with his Philadelphia-born wife Jessie P. Fenton and daughters Jessie and Maria. At some point, he returned to California where he died on 28 April 1890. He is buried in Santa Cruz Memorial Park.