William George Aston

William George Aston (9 April 1841 – 22 November 1911) was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, author, and scholar of the languages and histories of Korea and Japan.

Early life Aston was born near Derry, Ireland. He distinguished himself at Queen's College, Belfast (now Queen's University Belfast), which he attended 1859–1863. There he received a very thorough philological training in Latin, Greek, French, German and modern history. One of his professors was James McCosh.

Career Aston was appointed student interpreter to the British Legation in Japan on August 16, 1864 after passing a competitive examination and obtaining an honorary certificate on August 10. He mastered the theory of the Japanese verb, and in Edo began, with Ernest Mason Satow, those profound researches into the Japanese language which laid the foundations of the critical study of the Japanese language by western scholars. He was appointed CMG in the 1889 Birthday Honours.

Japan Aston made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century. Along with Ernest Mason Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain, he was one of three major British Japanologists active in Japan during the 19th century.

Aston was the first translator of the Nihongi into the English language (1896). Other publications were two Japanese grammars (1868 and 1872) and A History of Japanese Literature (1899). He lectured to the Asiatic Society of Japan several times, and many of his papers are published in their Transactions. and they were published in 2004. This part of Aston's personal collection is now preserved in the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.

1869 — A Short Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language 1872 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language, with a short chrestomathy 1877 — A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language 1888 — A Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language 1889 — Early Japanese history 1896 — Nihongi; Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697 1899 — A History of Japanese Literature (available at Wikisource) 1899 — Toriwi--its derivation 1902 — Littérature japonaise 1905 — Shinto, the Way of the Gods. 1907 — Shinto, the Ancient Religion of Japan

Articles 1879 — "H.M.S. Phaeton at Nagasaki," Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vol. 7, pp. 323–336.