Place: Shibuya Kyoiku Gakuen (1-21-18 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo150-0002)
About 10 minutes on foot from Shibuya Station (JR East Exit; subway Miyamasu Exit 10 or 11; or 15 minutes from Omotesando Station, Exit B2; or 15 minutes from Meiji-Jingumae Station, Exit 4. The road forking right from Meiji-dori is quite obvious, and the Gakuen is the first big building after a row of shops, with a waterfall streaming down one wall.)
Information: ASJ Office
Most members of the Society will know of Sir Ernest Satow because of his outstanding memoir A Diplomat in Japan which covers the years 1862-69, and is based in large part on his diaries of the period when he was a young student interpreter and consular official. It has been frequently re-published over the years since its first appearance in 1921, most recently in paperback (ICG Muse, Inc. 2000). Others will know that Satow was a famous Japanologist, frequently and justly bracketed with Basil Hall Chamberlain and William George Aston as one of the three British scholars who really understood Japan in the Meiji period. (See, for example, The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, fourth series, volume 11, 1996, pp. 151-68).
What is less well known is that Satow returned to Japan after service in Siam, Uruguay and Morocco and served as British Minister during the critical years at the end of the 19th century when some of the European Powers were still looking for colonies in East Asia, and Japan was herself absorbing Formosa as her first colony after the triumph of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Satow was unlucky to miss out on becoming ambassador (there was no ambassador until 1905 when Sir Claude MacDonald was promoted and the legation became an embassy, while the Japanese legation in London was also upgraded).
Satow's private diaries reveal a great deal about the statesmen of Meiji Japan (Ito Hirobumi, Okuma Shigenobu and many others), as well as the historical and social background of the time. They read like a Who's Who of the period. In addition they tell us much about the way diplomacy was conducted in the days before the telephone was widely used (it had been brought to Japan in 1890), the main methods of communication with London being the mail bag sent by steamer and the more immediate but cryptic telegraph. They also reveal the leisure pursuits of diplomats who spent much of the summer away from the heat of Tokyo at the cooler and more attractive Lake Chuzenji.
This lecture will attempt to present the lesser-known Satow and his world: A Diplomat Returns to Japan.
Prof. Ruxton's early education was at one of the prestigious British "public schools", Cheltenham College. From there he went to Cambridge University, where he received his B.A. in 1978, specializing in Modern Languages and Law, and his M.A. in 1982. His early years after graduation were mostly spent teaching at similar independent schools -Merchant Taylors, Uppingham and Hurstpierpoint. He came to Japan in 1988 under an A.E.T. programme set up at Sumoto in Hyogo, and subsequently taught at a number of educational institutions in Kobe. In 1994 he was appointed lecturer in the Department of Human Sciences at the Kyushu Institute of Technology in Kitakyushu, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1997. He also lectures concurrently at Kitakyushu University.
Prof. Ruxton lists as his fields of study Japanese diplomatic relations during the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods, and Anglo-Japanese relations, as well as the teaching of English as a foreign language. He has addressed the JACC (Nihon Hikaku Bunka Gakkai) three times on subjects connected with Satow and with the Iwakura Mission, and two years ago he spoke at the international conference of the European Association for Japanese Studies on "The Ending of Extraterritoriality in Japan". Besides the teaching of English, he has also made a study of the learning of Japanese as a foreign language, and has addressed both JACET and JALT on the learning of kanji by native English speakers.
It may be interesting to know that another ASJ member, Mr. Shozo Nagaoka, has nearly completed work on a Japanese translation of Ian Ruxton's The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1998), and this will be published later in the year. Mr. Nagaoka also translated The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow, British Minister in Japan (1895-1900) about ten years ago.
Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 3", March 2002, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.
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