Asiatic Society of Japan

Yuichiro Anzai, Chairman Ambassador Yoshinori Katori, Representative Director and President Morihiko Otaki Kyoko Mimura Bashir Mohabbat Norbert Palanovics The Asiatic Society of Japan, Inc. (一般社団法人日本アジア協会” or “Ippan Shadan Hojin Nihon Ajia Kyokai”) or "ASJ" is a non-profit organization of Japanology.

ASJ was founded at a meeting held on 8 October 1872 at the Grand Hotel, Yokohama, when Robert Grant Watson of the British Legation was elected the first President, and the first papers were read there on 30 October—Notes on Loochoo by Ernest Mason Satow, then Japanese Secretary at the British Legation, and The Hyalonema Mirabilis, a marine biological study by Henry Hadlow, a Royal Navy surgeon.

[3] ASJ's founders and earliest members were adventurous leaders who became pillars of Japan's modernization and industrialization at the dawn of Meiji Period.

In those days, there were numerous organizations like ASJ, each in their own way serving as focal points for documenting and discussing the discoveries that were being made by the men who were participating in the building of a new Japan.

Japanese members who were central to the Meiji Restoration included: Kanō Jigorō, Baron Naibu Kanda, Tsuda Sen, Nakamura Masanao, and Viscount Mori Arinori.

The 'foreign expert' group included[3] James Curtis Hepburn, Josiah Conder; John Milne, Edward Divers, James Main Dixon and Charles Dickinson West, all of the Imperial College of Engineering; Henry Faulds of the Tsukiji Hospital; Robert Maclagan of the Osaka Mint; Basil Hall Chamberlain; William George Aston, and Ernest Mason Satow.

Topics have come from the full spectrum of fields of knowledge as related to Japan, including culture, history, literature, science, business, politics, and economics.

The Transactions have covered an extraordinarily wide range of Japanese studies and the papers provide a fascinating conspectus of Western achievements in the field of Japanology over the decades, as well as useful examinations of many subjects that have not been treated elsewhere.