Sir Ernest Mason Satow
P.C.,G.C.M.G.
(1843-1929)
(Japanese
name: アーネスト・サトウ)
"A
great Englishman (even though his father was from Wismar and only naturalized
as a British subject in 1846), a great European, a great scholar and a great
friend of Japan, nay, of the whole of East Asia : in
short, a GIANT,
who in his lifetime - long before the era of easy global communications -
succeeded in bridging the chasm between East and West."
This is from the frontispiece of B.M. Allen's
1933 memoir of Satow, published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co. A photo of the author of this web page with Sir Ernest Satow’s
photograph in
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and Kinokuniya
BookWeb .
My presentation at the JAIR 2012 conference in Nagoya on 21 October
2012: “Meiji
Japan through the Eyes of Ernest Satow”(downloadable
pdf, about 10MB)
Work in Progress (September 2012)
With Professor Robert Morton of Chuo University I am transcribing,
annotating and indexing Satow’s diary for 1861-9.
This is definitely a worthwhile exercise as it is quite different in many parts
to A Diplomat in Japan (published
1921) which was based on these diaries and Satow’s
memory.
Here is Sir Ernest Satow as he appears in A Diplomat in Japan. He was knighted
KCMG in 1895 and GCMG in 1902. The photo on the left was taken when he was on leave
from Japan in Paris in December 1869, and the photo on the right was taken in
London when Satow was on leave from Peking.
NEW!! (26 July 2012)
A Diplomat in Japan (free ebook download)
A
Diplomat in Japan: A Clash of Cultures (on YouTube)
Sir
Ivor Roberts has updated Satow’s legacy to professional diplomacy by
editing the sixth
edition of Satow’s Guide to Diplomatic
Practice. The first edition
was written by Satow himself and published in 1917.
This latest edition was published
in 2009. Although it is inevitably much changed from the original, Sir Ivor begins his Preface thus: “Sir Ernest Satow’s Guide to
Diplomatic Practice although first published nearly a hundred years ago
remains a masterpiece. The book he wrote in 1917 was no dry collection of facts
and legal terms. It was suffused with illuminating, interesting, often
whimsical, anecdotes, and wise counsel.”
Volume Two of Satow’s Correspondence in
Japan 1895-1900 has been published in September 2011. Click on the front cover
for more details.
Satow
diaries 1862-3 (pdf)
My new paperback
book and e-book
(pdf) has just appeared on
amazon.com (April 9, 2010). It was first published in 2003 as a hardcover by Edition
Synapse of Tokyo and apparently there are still a few hardcover copies left.
My latest Satow
book (publication date September 1, 2009) is available in paperback here:
Click on the front cover!
The downloadable preview is here.
Download
the preview of this book: Sir Ernest Satow’s Private Letters to W.G.
Aston and F.V. Dickins (published February 2008)
Review of this book by Sir Hugh Cortazzi
on lulu.com (hyperlinks added
by the creator of this web page):
“More valuable information about nineteenth
century Japanese scholars
Students of Japanese history in the nineteenth century have reason to be
grateful to Ian Ruxton for the long and hard work
which he has put into transcribing and publishing the diaries and letters of
Sir Ernest Satow, an
outstanding scholar diplomat. This is the latest in a series of books which
Professor Ruxton has produced on the basis of the writings,
mostly in long-hand, of Sir Ernest Satow which are
kept in the National Archives.
These letters to Aston
and Dickins, two other
scholars of Japanese culture, cover a wide range of scholarly topics but also
many aspects of contemporary Japanese life and politics. They contain some
fascinating sidelights on personalities, including some of Satow’s
colleagues in the Japan
Consular Service, and on other scholars such as Basil Hall
Chamberlain and the art collector William Anderson. The letters also give
an insight to Satow’s personality including how he
came to become a practising Anglican. Despite Satow’s
deep interest in and knowledge of
Satow’s life as a subordinate to Sir Harry Parkes, the British
Minister in Tokyo from 1865-83 was often difficult and he was often critical in
his letters of Sir Harry, especially Parkes’
domineering manners, but in a letter to Dickins in
1893 Satow summed up his assessment of Parkes in the following favourable terms: ‘Sir Harry’s life was entirely occupied by his duties as British
representative. There was hardly any other side to it. He lived in and for his
work, and contributed more than any other foreigner to making the history of
On treaty revision Satow writing from
There is much of value for scholars in these letters even if some is inevitably
ephemeral and of limited relevance.”
Published on
Published on
British Envoy
in Peking (1900-06) in two
volumes (Volume One; Volume Two 812 pages total)
[Previews: Volume
One; Volume
Two ]
The
Correspondence of Sir Ernest Satow, British Minister in Japan (1895-1900),
Volume One
[ Preview
]
This book contains some of the
voluminous work-related correspondence sent to Sir Ernest Satow while he was
Her Britannic Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in
Japan (1895-1900) from the Satow Papers held at The National Archives, Kew,
London, published in full from handwritten originals for the use of scholars
and researchers, with notes. Some of the letters are from superiors at the
Foreign Office, but most are from subordinates: Tokyo legation staff and
consuls and staff at Nagasaki, Kobe and Hakodate.
NACSIS
database entry (English)
NACSIS database
entry (Japanese)
This book has also been on sale in the
physical (non-virtual) bookshop of the National Archives of the UK.
Go to my
other book page. It is a translation
which I have done about Japanese students at Cambridge in the Meiji era,
1868-1912. It is
available from amazon.com
A Wikipedia entry has been made for Satow here. The Japanese
entry is here.
The entertaining Kuaiwa Hen TWENTY-FIVE EXERCISES IN THE YEDO COLLOQUIAL, FOR THE USE OF
STUDENTS, WITH NOTES. (a Japanese
conversation text book written by Satow and published
at
In August
2003 a Japanese translation of my first book (published in English by Edwin Mellen Press in 1998 – see the orange-coloured book cover
below) about Sir Ernest Satow appeared. The
translation was published by Yushodo Shuppan
in
Here
is the front cover of the translation:
In
January 2003 my second book in English based on Satow’s
diaries appeared. It is available from Kinokuniya
online here.
It is published by Edition Synapse of
Here
is the front cover of my first
Satow book, published in 1998 by Edwin Mellen
Press
My
first book – pictured above – is called The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest
Mason Satow (1843-1929), a Scholar-Diplomat in
Both books
taken together represent a widening and deepening of knowledge about Satow’s life and times over his well-known autobiographical
A
Diplomat in Japan, which only covers his time in
I gave a
lecture about Satow in
The Japan Society was founded in 1891.
In the Proceedings of the Society (No. 133, Summer 1999) a book review of my
book, together with Toi Gake
(Distant Cliffs) by N. Hagihara, is to be found on
pp.75-76. The review was by Professor Ian Nish of the
PAGE
INDEX
A.
Who was Ernest Satow ?
B.
Book details
A. Who was Ernest Satow ?
Ernest Satow ("Satow"
is pronounced to rhyme with the British pronunciation of "tomato")
was a distinguished British scholar-diplomat, a fine linguist and a noted Japanologist
in Meiji
Here is Hugh Satow's
page. Hugh is related to E.M. Satow, and has put part of the Family Chronicle of the English Satows
and the family tree on
the web. He has pointed out the mention of his great great
uncle as H.M. Envoy to
Ernest
Satow was an undergraduate at University
College London from1859 to 1861. The Ernest Satow Chair of Japanese Law was established there in 1989.
UCL was also the institution where the Choshu Five (Ito Hirobumi,
Inoue Kaoru, Yamao Yozo,
Inoue Masaru and Endo Kinsuke) studied in 1863-4.
They were to become national leaders in the new
The Parkes Papers and many
early Japanese books originally collected by Satow
and his colleague W.G. Aston are at Cambridge University Library.
Sir Harry Parkes was Satow's
boss in
In
1992 Antelope Films, the BBCand TV Asahi collaborated
to make two programmes based on Ernest Satow's memoirs.
The first was called "A Clash of Cultures" and included
the Namamugi Incident (Richardson
Affair). The second was called "Witness to a Revolution". I sometimes
teach classes with this video.
The
Law School in
the University of Kent at Canterbury has a course in the law of diplomacy which
uses a book originally
written by Satow (subsequently
revised).
A
very brief mention in Fowler's The King's English,
1908. "The man who cleaned the slate in the
manner which Sir E. Satow has done both in
Here are the results of an online telnet
search of the Library
of Congress for books written by Satow.
Satow's original
diaries are in the Public
Record Office (
Here is an
(unfinished) outline of Satow's life.
From
July 29 to October 25, 1998 an exhibition entitled "A-nesuto Satou sono
jidai to shougai"
(The Life and Times of Ernest Satow) was held at the
Yokohama Archives of History. The
exhibition poster is here.
B. Book details
My book
(ISBN 0-7734-8248-2) is now available：
The
Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow
(1843-1929)
A
Scholar-Diplomat in East Asia
selected,
edited and annotated by
Ian C. Ruxton
published
by
The Edwin Mellen Press
of 415 Ridge
Street, Lewiston, New York, USA and Lampeter, Wales.
For
further details (eg. outline of contents,
price, order form etc.) please look here and here,or
contact:
The Edwin Mellen
PressLtd.,
Unit 17 Llambed Industrial Estate,
Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales SA 48 8LT
Tel (Intl.): +44(
Fax (Intl.): +44(
(Within the
Order by e-mail: emp@mellen.demon.co.uk
(
Or you could order from an
Internet bookshop, such as Amazon
or Heffers
(of Cambridge, UK) or Blackwells
(of Oxford, UK) by inputting "Satow" in
the online search facility. (In
There are four copies of my book in
the K.I.T. university library on Tobata campus. Search here.
