William George Aston CMG (9 April 1841 – 22 November 1911) was an Anglo-Irish diplomat, author, and scholar of the languages and histories of Korea and Japan.

Aston made a major contribution to the fledgling study of Japan's language and history in the 19th century.

Along with Ernest Mason Satow and Basil Hall Chamberlain, he was one of three major British Japanologists active in Japan during the 19th century.

Okamoto Kidō recalls in chapter eleven on the development and adaption of drama of his book, 明治劇談ランプの下にて, Meiji Gekidan Ranpu no Shitanite (On the Theatre of the Meiji Period - Under the Lamp) (in English) meeting Aston at the British Legation... Inevitably, I made up my mind to read the scripts of a foreign country.

So Mr. Aston, knowing the scripts of the various plays gave me readings, after all it was just the summary that I simply wanted to hear and as a consequence, based on that, I didn’t really end up appreciating the technique of playwriting.

The following summer, July if I remember correctly, I went as usual to visit him when Mr. Aston, laughing, said 'similarly you don’t know about this person’s publications' and showed me five books containing six volumes in temporary bindings which had been published.

[3] Aston donated these manuscript versions of Korean folk tales to the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia[6] and they were published in 2004.

A 1911 crayon drawing of Aston by Minnie Agnes Cohen only suggests what he might have looked like as a younger man.

[3] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about William George Aston, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 90+ works in 200+ publications in 4 languages and 3,000+ library holdings.