21 Facts About George Sansom

George Sansom passed an examination for the Diplomatic Service in September 1903.

George Sansom first arrived in Japan in 1904 and was attached to the British legation in Tokyo to learn the Japanese language.

George Sansom spent the majority of his diplomatic career in Japan, working in consulates all over the country while picking up the language.

George Sansom began his literary career in 1911 with a translation of the Tsurezuregusa by Yoshida Kenko, a major text of the Kamakura period.

George Sansom was on leave in London in 1915, but was declared unfit for military service in the First World War.

George Sansom was assigned by the Foreign Office to the War Office to undertake political espionage, and was sent to Archangel in Russia.

George Sansom returned to Japan in January 1920 as Secretary to Sir Charles Eliot, whose interest in Japanese Buddhism spurred George Sansom's own interest in Japanese history and culture.

George Sansom was thus encouraged to follow in the footsteps of his scholarly predecessors among British diplomats in Japan, such as Ernest Mason Satow, William George Aston and John Harington Gubbins.

George Sansom was divorced in June 1927, but remarried at the end of May the following year.

Also in 1928, George Sansom published An Historical Grammar of Japanese.

George Sansom followed this in 1931 with Japan: A Short Cultural History and in 1935 with a new edition of Sir Charles Eliot's Japanese Buddhism, which had been left incomplete at the time of Eliot's death.

In January 1930 George Sansom was promoted to Commercial Counsellor, in charge of improving trade relations.

In 1935 George Sansom took a leave of absence of six months, which he spent at Columbia University in New York as a lecturer.

George Sansom agreed to return to Japan for one more mission before taking up a position waiting for him at Columbia University.

George Sansom was later appointed as a civilian representative on the Far East War Council.

George Sansom was the British representative on the Far Eastern Commission, which formally oversaw the Allied Occupation of Japan.

George Sansom retired in 1947, and was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.

George Sansom published The Western World and Japan: A Study in the Interaction of European and Asiatic Cultures in 1949, and visited Japan in 1950 to give a series of lectures.

In 1955 George Sansom retired to Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University.

George Sansom was made an honorary fellow of the Japan Academy in 1951.

George Sansom died on 8 March 1965 while on a visit to Tucson, Arizona.