Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), was a professor of Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active in Japan during the late 19th century. (Others included Ernest Mason Satow and William George Aston.) He also wrote some of the earliest translations of haiku into English. He is perhaps best remembered for his informal and popular one-volume encyclopedia Things Japanese, which first appeared in 1890 and which he revised several times thereafter. His interests were diverse, and his works included a volume of poetry in French.

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. His many works include the first translation of the Kojiki into English (1906), A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese (1888), Things Japanese (1890), and A Practical Guide to the Study of Japanese Writing (1905). With W.B. Mason he wrote A Handbook for Travellers in Japan (1891), which went through numerous editions.

Chamberlain was a friend of Lafcadio Hearn, but the two became somewhat estranged. His youngest brother was Houston Stewart Chamberlain.

See also

• Anglo-Japanese relations

Works by Chamberlain

• The Classical Poetry of the Japanese. 1880.
• A Translation of the 'Ko-Ji-Ki'. 1883.
• The Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature of Japan Viewed in the Light of Aino Studies. 1887.
• A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese. 1887.
• Things Japanese. Six editions, 1890–1936. (A later paperback reprint of the fifth, 1905 edition — with the short bibliographies appended to many of its articles replaced by mentions of other books put out by the new publisher — was issued as Japanese Things.)
• A Handbook for Travellers in Japan. 3rd ed. 1891. Cowritten with W. B. Mason. (Earlier editions were not by Chamberlain.)
• "Bashō and the Japanese Poetical Epigram." Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 2, no. 30, 1902 (some of his translations are included in Faubion Bowers' "The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology", Dover Publications, 1996, 78pp. ISBN 0-486-29274-6)
• The Invention of a New Religion. 1912. web page, plain text Incorporated within Things Japanese from 1927.
• Huit Siècles de poesie française. 1927.
• . . . encore est vive la Souris. 1933.