William George Aston

William George Aston (9 April 1841 – 22 November 1911) was a British diplomat, author and scholar-expert in the language and history of Japan and Korea.Kornicki, P. F. (2004).  "Aston, William George (1841–1911)," Dictionary of National Biography (DNB); retrieved 2011-10-25.

Early life
Aston was born near Londonderry in  Ireland. In 1859-1863, he studied at Queen's College in Belfast, which is now Queen's University Belfast.Kornicki, Peter.  "Aston Cambridge and Korea,"  Cambridge University, Department of East Asian Studies, 2008; retrieved 2011-10-25.

Career
Aston was an interpreter in the British Legation in Japan in 1864.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2002). "Aston, William George" in Japan Encyclopedia, p. 58. He studied with Ernest Mason Satow. "Aston, William George," New International Encyclopedia, 1905 edition; retrieved 2011-10-25.

Aston worked in the British consular service in Tokyo, Kobe and Nagasaki. He retired in 1889.Ruxton, Ian. (2008). Sir Ernest Satow's private letters to W.G. Aston and F.V. Dickins: the Correspondence of a Pioneer Japanologist from 1870 to 1918, p. xiii.

Japan
Along with  Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain, Aston was one of three major British Japanologists during the 19th century.

Aston was the first translator of the Nihongi into the English language (1896).

Korea
In 1884, Aston was the first Western diplomat to live in Korea.

Aston donated his translations of Korean folk tales to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersberg, Russia and they were published in 2004.Ким Чегук. Корейские новеллы. Из корейских рукописей Санкт-Петербургского филиала Института востоковедения РАН / Факсимиле рукописей. Перевод с корейского; Uliana Kobyakova, 'A study on the Corean tales' ; retrieved 2011-10-25. This part of Aston's personal collection is now at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.

Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about William George Aston, OCLC/WorldCat includes roughly 90+ works in 200+ publications in 4 languages and 3,000+ library holdings. WorldCat Identities:  Aston, W. G. (William George) 1841-1911

 A Short Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language (1869)
 A Grammar of the Japanese Written Language (1877)
 A Grammar of the Japanese Spoken Language (1877)
 Early Japanese history (1889)
 Nihongi; Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697 (1896)
 A History of Japanese Literature (1898)
 Littérature japonaise (1902)
 Shinto, the Way of the Gods (1905)
 Shinto, the Ancient Religion of Japan (1907)

References

Other websites

  Aston, W. G. (William George), 1841-1911 at Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) 
The History of Japanese Literature by W.G. Aston (Yokohama: Kelly and Walsh, 1899)

Category:British Japanologists
Category:1841 births
Category:1911 deaths
Category:British diplomats
Category:People from County Londonderry