The history of the relationship between Japan and England began in 1600 with the arrival of William Adams (Adams the Pilot, Miura Anjin), (the first of very few non-Japanese samurai) on the shores of KyushuatUsukiinŌita Prefecture. During the Sakoku period (1641–1853), there were no formal relations between the two countries. The Dutch served as intermediaries. The treaty of 1854 began formal diplomatic ties, which improved to become a formal alliance 1902–1922. The British dominions pressured Britain to end the alliance. Relations deteriorated rapidly in the 1930s, over the Japanese invasions of Manchuria and China, and the cutoff of oil supplies in 1941. Japan declared war in December 1941 and seized Hong Kong, British Borneo (with its oil), and Malaya, causing the two nations to engage in a bloody conflict for the next four years. With overwhelming force, the Japanese sank much of the British fleet and forced the surrender of Singapore, capturing many prisoners. However, the British eventually pushed them back once they reached the outskirts of India. Relations improved in the 1950s–1970s, and as memories of the conflict faded, became warm. On 3 May 2011, British Foreign SecretaryWilliam Hague said that Japan is "one of [Britain]'s closest partners in Asia".[citation needed]
Japan, the United Kingdom, and Italy are planning to establish a control tower for the joint development of a next-generation fighter jet by fiscal 2024.[1]
1577. Richard Wylles writes about the people, customs and manners of Giapan in the History of Travel published in London. Mercator based map of Japan (1570)
1580. Richard Hakluyt advises the first English merchants to find a new trade route via the Northwest passage to trade wool for silver with Japan (sending two Barque ships, the George piloted by Arthur Pet and William by Charles Jackman) which returned unsuccessfully by Christmas the same year.[2]
1587. Two young Japanese men named Christopher and Cosmas sailed on a Spanish galleon to California, where their ship was capturedbyThomas Cavendish. Cavendish brought the two Japanese men with him to England where they spent approximately three years before going again with him on his last expedition to the South Atlantic where they were heading to Japan to begin trade relations. They are the first known Japanese men to have set foot in the British Isles.[3]
1593. Richard Hawkins leaves England on board the Dainty in a bid to discover the 'Iſlands of Japan' via the Magellan Strait in 1594, the very route William Adams would take himself in 1599.[4] Hawkins however was captured by the Spanish at Peru, only returning in 1603 after a ransom of £12,000 was paid by his mother for his release.
1600. William Adams, a seaman from Gillingham, Kent, was the first English adventurer to arrive in Japan. Acting as an advisor to the Tokugawa shōgun, he was renamed Miura Anjin, granted a house and land, and spent the rest of his life in his adopted country. He also became one of the first English samurai.[citation needed]
1605. John Davis, the famous English explorer, was killed by Japanese pirates off the coast of Thailand, thus becoming the first known Englishman to be killed by a Japanese.[5]
1613. Following an invitation from William Adams in Japan, the English captain John Saris arrived at Hirado Island in the ship Clove with the intent of establishing a trading factory. Adams and Saris travelled to Suruga Province where they met with Tokugawa Ieyasu at his principal residence in September before moving on to Edo where they met Ieyasu's son Hidetada. During that meeting, Hidetada gave Saris two varnished suits of armour for King James I, today housed in the Tower of London.[6] On their way back, they visited Tokugawa once more, who conferred trading privileges on the English through a Red Seal permit giving them "free licence to abide, buy, sell and barter" in Japan.[7] The English party headed back to Hirado Island on 9 October 1613. However, during the ten-year activity of the company between 1613 and 1623, apart from the first ship (Clove in 1613), only three other English ships brought cargoes directly from London to Japan.
1623. The Amboyna massacre was perpetrated by the Dutch East India Company. After the incident England closed its commercial base at Hirado Island, now in Nagasaki Prefecture, without notifying Japan. After this, the relationship ended for more than two centuries.
1625. A number of documents including the Iaponian Charter, are the first published translated Japanese documents into English by Samuel Purchas.
1639. Tokugawa Iemitsu announced his Sakoku policy. Only the Dutch Republic was permitted to retain limited trade rights.
1640. Uriemon Eaton the son of William Eaton (a worker at the EIC post in Japan) and Kamezo (a Japanese woman), becomes the first Japanese to join Academia in England as a scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge.
1668. 25 February. Henry Oldenburg addresses the Royal Society on the letters of Richard Cocks, particularly noting English trading privileges from the time of Cocks, striking new interest in trade with Japan in England. Based on this new interest, surviving member of the original factory William Eaton (fl.1613-1668), was contacted in order to reopen trade between England and Japan.[8]
1670. John Ogilby publishes the first translation of Atlas Japanensis in London, reprinted in 1671 & 1673.[9]
1670. The EIC factories are set up at modern day Taiwan (1670–1685) after Koxinqa invites the British to set up a factory.[10]
1672. Tongking EIC factory begins operations (along with 'Tywan') with the intention by the British to be used as bases for further trade with Japan.
1673. An English ship named Returner visited Nagasaki harbour with factors from the first Hirado factory, and asked for a renewal of trading relations. But the Edo shogunate refused after Dutch prompting. The government cited the withdrawal 50 years earlier, and found it unacceptable that the English king had married the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza, claiming the English to favour the Roman Catholic Church.
1703. James Cunninghame FRS attempts to initiate trade with Japan from Cochinchina and the chaplain James Pound in his service notes of VOC activity in Japan until they are attacked by locals in 1705.
1713. Daniel Defoe writes of William Adams and his 'famous voyage to Japan' in his satire Memoirs of Count Tariff.
1731. Arthur Dobbs advocates the finding of the North West Passage to 'be able to send a Squadron of ships, Even to force Japan into a Beneficial Treaty of Commerce with Britain.'
1741. The Middleton Expedition is launched to find the Northwest Passage with orders to not engage 'Japanese ships' until the following year should they come across one, with plans halting to trade or settle Japan owing to the circumstances surrounding the Seven Years' War.
1745. Thomas Astley reprints by popular demand the Logbook of William Adams in his A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels ; in Europe, Asia, Africa and America under Nippon.[11]
1753. 50 Japanese objects from the Sloane collection acquired by Kaempfer during his residence in Japan are bequeathed to the British Museum.
1791. James Colnett sails HMS Argonaut from Canton to Japan becoming the second unsuccessful attempt at trade with Sakoku Japan.
1813. Thomas Raffles attempts trade with Japan under a British flag to oust Dutch trade monopoly, only for the ooperhoofd to fly the ships under Dutch colours, being rescinded by Governor-General of India on the basis of excessive expense in 1814, also finally being halted in May 1815 by Raffles after the handover of the British colony of Java to the Dutch.
1819. The third British ship 'The Brothers' piloted by Captain Peter Gordon, visited Uraga on 17 June seeking to trade with Japan, unsuccessful at Edo to get any treaty.
1819. August 3. The first British Whaler HMS Syren begins to exploit the Japan whaling grounds.
1824. 12 English whalers stray ashore looking for food and are apprehended by Aizawa Seishisai leading to new repulsion acts against foreign vessels.
1832. Otokichi, Kyukichi and Iwakichi, castaways from Aichi Prefecture, crossed the Pacific and were shipwrecked on the west coast of North America. The three Japanese men became famous in the Pacific Northwest and probably inspired Ranald MacDonald to go to Japan. They joined a trading ship to the UK, and later Macau. One of them, Otokichi, took British citizenship and adopted the name John Matthew Ottoson. He later made two visits to Japan as an interpreter for the Royal Navy.
1840. Indian Oak becomes shipwrecked off the coast of Okinawa and a junk is built by Okinawan peoples for the survivors.
1842. On the basis of the British naval victory at the First Opium War, the Repel Edicts are renounced by the Bakufu.
1852. Charles MacFarlane publishes Japan: An Account, Geographical and Historical, from the Earliest Period at which the Islands Composing this Empire Were Known to Europeans, Down to the Present Time, and the Expedition fitted out in the United States, which surmises all known European accounts of Japan and travels to Japan before the Ansei Treaties.[12]
1855. In an effort to find the Russian fleet in the Pacific Ocean during the Crimean war, a French-British naval force reached the port of Hakodate, which was open to British ships as a result of the Friendship Treaty of 1854, and sailed further north, seizing the Russian-American Company's possessions on the island of Urup in the Kuril archipelago. The Treaty of Paris (1856) restitutes the island to Russia.[13]
1866 HSBC established a Japanese branch in Yokohama.
1867. The Icarus affair, an incident involving the murder of two British sailors in Nagasaki, leading to increased diplomatic tensions between Britain and the Tokugawa shogunate.
1880. Japan government established Yokohama Specie Bank for only foreign transaction bank in Japan, with the support of HSBC.
1881. Azusa Ono suggests using the British model for the new Japanese constitution.
1886. Normanton incident British merchant vessel sinks off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture. Crew escape while 25 Japanese passengers perish. Widespread Japanese public outrage as subsequent Board of Enquiry under extraterritorial court finds the British crew not guilty. The case is later reopened, and the crew are given three month sentences.[citation needed]
1902. The Japanese–British alliance was signed in London on 30 January. It was a diplomatic milestone that saw an end to Britain's splendid isolation, and removed the need for Britain to build up its navy in the Pacific.[15][16]
1905. The Japanese–British alliance was renewed and expanded. Official diplomatic relations were upgraded, with ambassadors being exchanged for the first time.
1908. The Japan-British Society was founded in order to foster cultural and social understanding.
1909. Fushimi Sadanaru returns to Britain to convey the thanks of the Japanese government for British advice and assistance during the Russo-Japanese War.
1910. Sadanaru represents Japan at the state funeral of Edward VII, and meets the new king George V at Buckingham Palace.
1910. The Japan–British Exhibition is held at Shepherd's Bush in London. Japan made a successful effort to display its new status as a great power by emphasizing its new role as a colonial power in Asia.[17]
1911. The Japanese – British alliance was renewed with approval of the quasi-independent dominions (i.e. at the time, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa).
1913. The IJN Kongō, the last of the British-built warships for Japan's navy, enters service.
1914–1915. Japan joined World War I as Britain's ally under the terms of the alliance and captured German-occupied Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China Mainland. They also help Australia and New Zealand capture archipelagos like the Marshall Islands and the Mariana Islands.
1915. The Twenty-One Demands would have given Japan varying degrees of control over all of China, and would have prohibited European powers from extending their influence in China any further. It is eventually scrapped.[18]
1917–1935. Close relations between the two countries steadily worsen.[19]
1919. Japan proposes a racial equality clause in negotiations to form the League of Nations, calling for "making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality."[20] Britain, which supports the racially discriminatory laws in the dominions, such as the White Australia policy, cannot assent, and the proposal is rejected.
1921. Britain indicates it will not renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 primarily because of opposition from the United States and also Canada.[21]
1921. Crown Prince Hirohito visited Britain and other Western European countries. It was the first time that a Japanese crown prince had traveled overseas.
1921. Arrival in September of the Sempill Mission in Japan, a British technical mission for the development of Japanese Aero-naval forces. It provided the Japanese with flying lessons and advice on building aircraft carriers; the British aviation experts kept close watch on Japan after that.[22]
1922. Washington Naval Conference concluding in the Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty, and Nine-Power Treaty; major naval disarmament for 10 years with sharp reduction of Royal Navy & Imperial Navy. The Treaties specify that the relative naval strengths of the major powers are to be UK = 5, US = 5, Japan = 3, France = 1.75, Italy = 1.75. The powers will abide by the treaty for ten years, then begin a naval arms race.[23]
1922. Edward, Prince of Wales travelling on HMS Renown, arrives in Yokohama on 12 April for a four-week official visit to Japan.
1923. The Japanese-British alliance was officially discontinued on 17 August in response to U.S. and Canadian pressure.
1930. The London disarmament conference angers Japanese Army and Navy. Japan's navy demanded parity with the United States and Britain, but was rejected; it maintained the existing ratios and Japan was required to scrap a capital ship. Extremists assassinate Japan's prime minister, and the military takes more power.[24]
1931. September. Japanese Army seizes control of Manchuria, which China has not controlled in decades. It sets up a puppet government. Britain and France effectively control the League of Nations, which issues the Lytton Report in 1932, saying that Japan had genuine grievances, but it acted illegally in seizing the entire province. Japan quits the League, Britain takes no action.[25][26]
1934. The Royal Navy sends ships to Tokyo to take part in a naval parade in honour of the late Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, one of Japan's greatest naval heroes, the "Nelson of the East".
The surrender of Singapore is a major defeat for the British; over hundred thousand British and Commonwealth soldiers become prisoners of war.[28] Many British and Commonwealth POWs die in very harsh conditions of captivity.
1944. The Japanese invasion of India via Burma ends in disaster. The resulting battles of Imphal and Kohima becomes the worst defeat on land to that date in Japanese history.[29]
1945. August. The last significant land battle of the Second World War involved British and Japanese forces. It took place in Burma – a failed Japanese breakout attempt in the Pegu Yomas.
1952. Treaty of San Francisco – the peace treaty in which Anglo-Japanese relations were normalized. The Japanese government accepts the judgements of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. According to Peter Lowe, the British were still angry over the humiliation of the surrender of Singapore in 1942; resentment at American domination of the occupation of Japan; apprehension concerning renewed Japanese competition in textiles and shipbuilding; and bitterness regarding Japanese atrocities against British prisoners of war.[30]
1953. Nineteen-year-old Crown Prince Akihito (Emperor from 1989 to 2019), represents Japan at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
1966. The Beatles played at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo to overwhelming adulation. This performance emphasized growing good will between Britain and Japan in their foreign relations policies.
1985. Japan wins the bid for work on Turkey's Bosphorous Bridge over the UK's competing bid.[36] UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher states that it is a "bitter blow" that the UK market is open to the Japan, resulting in good profits for Japan and its ability to provide larger credit for international projects than the UK can.[36]
2001. The year-long "Japan 2001" cultural-exchange project saw a major series of Japanese cultural, educational and sporting events held around the UK.
December 2018. A new trade deal between Japan and the European Union which is hoped could also act as blue-print for post-Brexit trade between Japan and the UK was approved by the European Parliament.[42]
May 2022. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida meet in-person in Downing Street and sign a Reciprocal Access Agreement. The agreement, which was made in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's rise in Indo-Pacific region, seeks to expand joint military exercises and increase working together for disaster relief.[44][45][46] It also hopes to make nations who are allies of the UK and Japan less dependent on oil and gas exported from Russia.[45]
June 2022. The JS Kashima made a port call in London as part of an exchange event between Japan and Britain and to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.[47]
December 2022. Japan, the UK, Italy, sign an agreement to create the Global Combat Air Programme, with its first jets to be produced by 2035. The programme is about "merging the three nations' costly existing research into new aerial war technology, from stealth capacity to high-tech sensors".[49]
Rutherford Alcock - British diplomat to Japan from 1858 to 1864 and the first 'outsider' to climb Mount Fuji in 1860
Anna d'Almeida - first female British travel writer to have visited Japan in 1862, not the first known female writer on Japan however, that being the translator Mary Margaret Busk in 1841
Ernest Henry Wilson - plant collector who brought 63 sakura to the West from 1911 to 1916, the Wilson stump (ウィルソン株, Wilson kabu) also has his namesake
The family name is given in italics. Usually the family name comes first in regards to Japanese historical figures, but in modern times not
so for the likes of Kazuo Ishiguro and Katsuhiko Oku, both well known in the United Kingdom.
Katsuhiko Oku - Oxford University rugby player, diplomat in Japanese embassy in London who died in Iraq, 2003. Posthumously promoted to ambassador. See also the Oku-Inoue fund for the children of Iraq.
Suematsu Kenchō - Cambridge University graduate and statesman
Ginnosuke Tanaka - Cambridge University graduate, introduced rugby to Japan
Tōgō Heihachirō - Spent time in the UK, one of Japan's greatest naval heroes, the "Nelson of the East"
Gnyuki Torimaru - Fashion designer (b.1937) going under his Yuki label in the 1970s-1980s, known for his jersey-drape dresses as worn by Diana to Japan in 1986
^English Dreams and Japanese Realities: Anglo-Japanese Encounters Around the Globe, 1587-1673, Thomas Lockley, 2019, Revista de Cultura, p 126
^The observations of Sir Richard Hawkins, Knt in his voyage into the South sea in the year 1593 :reprinted from the edition of 1622, Charles Ramsay Drinkwater Bethune, Richard Hawkins, 1847[1622], p.7
^Stephen Turnbull, Fighting ships of the Far East (2), p 12, Osprey Publishing
^The Red Seal permit was re-discovered in 1985 by Professor Hayashi Nozomu, in the Bodleian Library. Massarella, Derek; Tytler Izumi K. (1990) "The Japonian Charters" Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp 189–205.
^See The English factory in Taiwan, 1670-1685, 1995, Anthony Farrington, Ts'ao Yung-ho, Chang Hsiu-jung, Huang Fu-san, Wu Mi-tsa, pp.1-20, National Taiwan University, Taipei
^Thierry Mormanne : "La prise de possession de l'île d'Urup par la flotte anglo-française en 1855", Revue Cipango, "Cahiers d'études japonaises", No 11 hiver 2004 pp. 209–236.
^William Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890–1902 (2nd ed. 1950), pp. pp 745–86.
^John L. Hennessey,『Moving up in the world: Japan's manipulation of colonial imagery at the 1910 Japan–British Exhibition.』Museum History Journal 11.1 (2018): 24-41.
^Malcolm Duncan Kennedy, The Estrangement of Great Britain and Japan, 1917-35 (Manchester UP, 1969).
^Gordon Lauren, Paul (1978). "Human Rights in History: Diplomacy and Racial Equality at the Paris Peace Conference". Diplomatic History. 2 (3): 257–278. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7709.1978.tb00435.x. S2CID154765654.
^J. Bartlet Brebner, "Canada, the Anglo-Japanese alliance and the Washington conference." Political Science Quarterly 50.1 (1935): 45-58. online
^Bruce M. Petty, "Jump-Starting Japanese Naval Aviation." Naval History (2019) 33#6 pp 48-53.
^A.J.P. Taylor, English History: 1914–1945 (1965) pp 370–72.
^David Wen-wei Chang, "The Western Powers and Japan's Aggression in China: The League of Nations and" The Lytton Report"." American Journal of Chinese Studies (2003): 43–63. online
^Thomas S. Wilkins, "Anatomy of a Military Disaster: The Fall of" Fortress Singapore" 1942." Journal of Military History 73.1 (2009): 221–230.
^Bond, Brian; Tachikawa, Kyoichi (2004). British and Japanese Military Leadership in the Far Eastern War, 1941–1945 Volume 17 of Military History and Policy Series. Routledge. p. 122. ISBN9780714685557.
^Peter Lowe,『After fifty years: the San Francisco Peace Treaty in the context of Anglo-Japanese relations, 1902–52.』Japan Forum 15#3 (2003) pp 389–98.
^ abChen, Muyang (2024). The Latecomer's Rise: Policy Banks and the Globalization of China's Development Finance. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. p. 102. ISBN9781501775857.
^Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN0-14-102715-0.
^Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VI, BRILL, 2003, Noboru Koyama pp. 393–401.
^Hiromi T. Rogers, 2016, Anjin: The Life and Times of Samurai William Adams as Seen Through Japanese Eyes, Renaissance Books.
^Gary P. Leupp, 2003, Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543 - 1900, pp. 56–57.
^Umeko Tsuda: a Pioneer in Higher Education for Women in Japan, Mari Kunieda, July–December 2020, Vol.7, No.2, p.37, Tiempo y Educación, Espacio,
e-ISSN: 1698-7802, Tsuda University
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