About the author:
Basil Hall Chamberlain (18 October 1850 – 15 February 1935) was a professor of Japanese at Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active in Japan during the late 19th century. He also wrote some of the earliest translations of haiku into English. He is perhaps best remembered for his informal and popular one-volume encyclopedia Things Japanese, which first appeared in 1890 and which he revised several times thereafter. His interests were diverse, and his works include an anthology of poetry in French.
Chamberlain landed in Japan on 29 May 1873. He taught at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in Tokyo from 1874 to 1882. His most important position, however, was as professor of Japanese at Tokyo Imperial University beginning in 1886. It was here that he gained his reputation as a student of Japanese language and literature. (He was also a pioneering scholar of the Ainu and Ryukyuan languages.) His many works include the first translation of the Kojiki into English (1882), A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (1888), Things Japanese (1890), and A Practical Guide to the Study of Japanese Writing (1905). A keen traveller despite chronic weak health, he cowrote (with W. B. Mason) the 1891 edition of A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, of which revised editions followed.
Chamberlain was a friend of the writer Lafcadio Hearn, once a colleague at the University, but the two became estranged over the years. Percival Lowell dedicated his travelogue Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan (1891) to Chamberlain.
Chamberlain also translated the works of Fukuzawa Yukichi and other Japanese scholars into English. During his tenure at the Tokyo Imperial University, he sent many Japanese artifacts to the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford.
He left Japan in 1911 and moved to Geneva, where he lived until his death in 1935.
Contents:
Note on the Pronunciation of Japanese Words
Introductory Chapter
Abacus
Abdication
Acupuncture
Adams (Will)
Adoption
Agriculture
Ainos
Amusements
Archæology
Architecture
Armour
Army
Art
Asiatic Society of Japan
Bamboos
Bathing
Bibliography
Birthdays
Blackening the Teeth
Books on Japan
Botany
Bowing to the Emperor’s Picture
Bronze
Buddhism
Camphor
Capital Cities
Carving
Cats
Cha-no-yu
Characteristics
Charms and Sacred Pictures
Chauvinism
Cherry-blossom
Chess
Children
Christianity in Japan
Clans
Classes of Society
Climate
Cloisonné
Confucianism
Conventions
Cormorant-fishing
Cremation
Currency
Cycle
Daimyō
Dances
Decoration
Demoniacal Possession
Divination
Dress
Duck-hunting
Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Education
Embroidery
Empress
English as she is Japped
Esotericism
Eta
Eurasians
Europeanisation
Fairy-tales
Fans
Fashionable Crazes
Festivals
Filial Piety
Fires
Fire-walking
Fishing
Flag
Flowers
Food
Foreign Employés in Japan
Forfeits
Formosa
Forty-seven Rōnins
Fuji
Fun
Funerals
Gardens
Geisha
Geography
Geology
Globe-trotters
Go
Government
Harakiri
Heraldry
History and Mythology
Incense Parties
Indian Influence
Industrialism
Japan
Japanese People (Characteristics of the)
Jinrikisha
Kaempfer
Kago
Kakke
Kakemono
Lacquer
Language
Law
Literature
Little Spring
Living
Logic
Long-tailed Fowls
Lotus
Luchu
Luck (Gods of)
Maps
Marriage
Maru
Massage
Metal-work
Mikado
Mineral Springs
Mirrors
Missions
Moral Maxims
Mourning
Moxa
Music
Mythology
Names
Naturalisation
Navy
Newspapers
Nō
Nobility
Numerical Categories
Painting
Paper
Parkes (Sir Harry)
Perry (Commodore)
Philosophy
Pidgin-Japanese
Pilgrimages
Pipes
Poetry
Politeness
Polo
Population
Porcelain and Pottery
Posts
Praying-wheel
Printing
Proverbs
Pug-dogs
Race
Railways
Religion
Roads
Rowing
Sake
Salutations
Samurai
Sculpture
Shimo-bashira
Shintō
Shipping
Shōgun
Shooting
Siebold
Silk
Singing-girls
Societies
Society
Story-tellers
Sun, Moon, and Stars
Supernatural Creatures
Superstitions
Swords
Taste
Tattooing
Tea
Tea Ceremonies
Telegraphs
Theatre
Time
Tobacco
Topsy-turvydom
Torii
Towels
Trade
Treaties with Foreign Powers
Tycoon
Vegetable Wax
Volcanoes
Weights and Measures
Woman (Status of)
Wood Engraving
Wrestling
Writing
Yezo
Yoshiwara
Zoology
Index
