He was a professor of the Japanese language at Tokyo Imperial University and one of the foremost British Japanologists active in Japan during the late 19th century.

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.

He was brought up speaking French as well as English, even before moving to Versailles to live with his maternal grandmother in 1856 upon his mother's death.

Chamberlain had hoped to study at Oxford, but instead started work at Barings Bank in London.

[3] Percival Lowell dedicated his travelogue Noto: An Unexplored Corner of Japan (1891) to Chamberlain.