Paper short abstract:

Capt. Francis Brinkley was a respected scholar of Japan during the Meiji period, yet his name is all but absent from the history of British Japanology. By analyzing writings by his contemporaries, G. Satow and B.H. Chamberlain, this talk will explore a possible reason for his legacy’s obscurity.

Paper long abstract:

Captain Francis Brinkley arrived in Japan shortly before the Meiji Restoration, and until his death in 1912, he proved himself an invaluable ally for Japan, dedicating his life to the study and popularization of its language, history, and art, not only through his scholarship but also through his journalistic work, as well as his efforts in the field of English-language teaching. And yet, his name seems to have largely slipped through the cracks in recent accounts of (Meiji-period) English-language Japanology.

Why is it that, despite his remarkable scholarly and journalistic activity, Brinkley’s legacy as an early British Japanologist is all but forgotten nowadays, while names such as B.H. Chamberlain, E. Satow, and W.G. Aston stand at the forefront of Meiji-period Japanology? One common assumption is that his consistent pro-Japanese stance – which he exhibited throughout his journalistic career, in the editorial work for “The Japan Mail,” as well as his correspondence for the London “Times” – was a financially motivated one. However, this presentation will argue that the devaluation of his legacy within the field of English-language Japanology had more to do with an ideological shift within the field itself, mainly surrounding the issue of the Anglo-Japanese treaty revision. To this effect, I will analyze correspondence by Brinkley’s contemporaries, B.H. Chamberlain and E. Satow, as well as relevant entries from Chamberlain’s “Things Japanese.”

In doing so, I hope this presentation will provide the necessary basis for a re-evaluation of Brinkley's activity as a Japanologist but will also shed more light on how the complex changes undergone by Japan around the turn of the 20th century influenced the evolution of early English-language Japanology as a field.