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Basil Hall Chamberlain

Male 1850 - 1935  (84 years)    Has more than 100 ancestors but no descendants in this family tree.

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  • Name Basil Hall Chamberlain 
    Birth 18 Oct 1850 
    Gender Male 
    Death 15 Feb 1935 
    Siblings 2 Siblings 
    Person ID I679058  Geneagraphie
    Last Modified 22 Mar 2010 

    Father Rear Adm. William Charles Chamberlain,   b. 21 Apr 1818   d. 27 Feb 1878 (Age 59 years) 
    Mother Elizabeth Jane Hall   d. 29 Aug 1856 
    Family ID F297374  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  • Photos Photos (Log in)Photos (Log in)

  • Notes 
    • He was brought up in French as well as English , even before moving to Versailles to live with his maternal grandmother in 1856 upon his mother's death. Once in France he acquired German as well. Chamberlain had hoped to study at Oxford , but instead started work at Barings Bank in London . He was unsuited to the work and soon had a nervous breakdown. It was in the hope of a full recovery that he sailed out of Britain , with no clear destination in mind.

      Chamberlain landed in Japan on 29 May 1873. He taught at the Imperial Naval School 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 revisions appeared later.
      Chamberlain was a friend of Lafcadio Hearn , but the two became somewhat estranged



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