James Murdoch (27 September 1856 – 30 October 1921) was a Scottish Orientalist scholar and journalist, who worked as a teacher in the Empire of Japan and Australia.

He exhibited signs of intellectual brilliance as a child, and although his family was of moderate means, he won a scholarship to Aberdeen University where he completed a bachelor's and master's degree.

In a series of articles, he predicted that within a generation the Australian colonies would form an independent republic, which would turn socialist through a violent revolution unless the harsh living conditions of the working classes were alleviated.

Murdoch came to Japan as a foreign advisor, from September 1889 – 1893 as a professor of European history at the First Higher School, an elite institution for young men entering the Tokyo Imperial University.

He also wrote several texts for pictorial guidebooks aimed at historically minded tourists, and edited the memoirs of Hikozo Hamada, the castaway who became the first Japanese to acquire American citizenship.

On 23 November 1899, while teaching economic history at the Higher Commercial College (today's Hitotsubashi University) in Tokyo, he married Takeko Okada.

In 1915, following the completion of the manuscript of the third volume, The Tokugawa Epoch 1652–1868, poverty forced Murdoch back into teaching, this time at the junior high-school level.

[8][9] In return for £600 a year from the Defense Department, the university also permitted Murdoch to visit Japan annually to obtain first-hand information on shifts in Japanese public opinion and foreign policy.

The first such visit resulted in a memorandum highly critical of Australia's intransigence on the racial equality issue raised by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference.

Similarly, two years later Murdoch was called to Melbourne to give the Prime Minister of Australia his views on the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance.