o Japan in 1861 as
student-interpreter to the British Legation, receiving his first drill
under Rev. S.R. Brown, D.D., author of A Grammar of Colloquial Japanese.
To ceaseless industry, this scholar, to whom the world is so much
indebted for knowledge of Japan, has added philosophic insight. Besides
unearthing documents whose existence was unsuspected, he has cleared the
way for investigators and comparative students by practically removing
the barriers reared by archaic speech and writing. His papers in the
T.A.S.J., on The Shint[=o] Shrines at Ise, the Revival of Pure
Shint[=o], and Ancient Japanese Rituals, together with his Hand-book for
Japan, form the best collection of materials for the study of the
original and later forms of Shint[=o].]

[Footnote 2: The scholar who above all others has, with rare acumen
united to laborious and prolonged toil, illuminated the subject of
Japan's chronology and early history is Mr. W.G. Aston of the British
Civil Service. He studied at the Queen's University, Ireland, receiving
the degree of M.A. He was appointed student-interpreter in Japan, August
6, 1864. He is the author of a Grammar of the Written Japanese Language,
and has been a student of the comparative history and speech and writing
of China, Korea, and Japan, during the past thirty years. See his
valuable papers in the T.A.S.J., and the learned societies in Great
Britain. In his paper on Early Japanese History, T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI.,
pp. 39-75, he recapitulates the result of his researches, in which he
is, in the main, supported by critical native scholars, and by the late
William Bramsen, in his Japanese Chronological Tables, T[=o]ki[=o],
1880. He considers A.D. 461 as the first trustworthy date in the
Japanese annals. We quote from his paper, Early Japanese History,
T.A.S.J., Vol. XVI., p. 73.

1. The earliest date of the accepted Japanese Chronology, the accuracy
of which is confirmed by external evidence, is A.D. 461.

2. Japanese History, properly so called, can hardly be said to exist
previous to A.D. 500. (A cursory examination leads me to think that the
annals of the sixth century must also be received with caution.)

3. Korean History and Chronology are more trustworthy than those of
Japan during the period previous to that date.

4. While there was an Empress of Japan in the third century A.D., the
statement that she conquered Korea is highly improbable.

5. Chinese learning was introduced into Japan from