Ernest Satow
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The Right Honourable Sir Ernest Mason Satow GCMG |
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The young Ernest Mason Satow. Photograph taken in Paris, December 1869.
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
30 June 1843 Clapton, London, England |
| Died | 26 August 1929 (aged 86) Ottery St Mary, England |
| Spouse(s) | Takeda Kane (1853–1932) |
| Children | Takeda Eitaro Takeda Hisayoshi (1883–1972) |
| Parents | Hans David Christoph Satow Margaret Mason |
| Education |
Mill Hill School University College London |
| Occupation | Diplomat |
Sir Ernest Mason Satow, GCMG, PC (30 June 1843 – 26 August 1929), was a British scholar, diplomat and Japanologist.
Satow was born to an ethnically German father (Hans David Christoph Satow, born in Wismar, then under Swedish rule, naturalised British in 1846) and an English mother (Margaret, née Mason) in Clapton, North London. He was educated at Mill Hill School and University College London (UCL).
Satow was an exceptional linguist, an energetic traveller, a writer of travel guidebooks, a dictionary compiler, a mountaineer, a keen botanist (chiefly with F. V. Dickins) and a major collector of Japanese books and manuscripts on all kinds of subjects. He also loved classical music and the works of Dante on which his brother-in-law Henry Fanshawe Tozer was an authority. Satow kept a diary for most of his adult life which amounts to 47 mostly handwritten volumes.
As a celebrity, albeit not a major one, he was the subject of a cartoon portrait by Spy in the British Vanity Fair magazine, 23 April 1903.
Satow is better known in Japan than in Britain or the other countries in which he served. He was a key figure in East Asia and Anglo-Japanese relations, particularly in Bakumatsu- (1853–1867) and Meiji-period (1868–1912) Japan, and in China after the Boxer Rebellion, 1900–06. He also served in Siam, Uruguay and Morocco, and represented Britain at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. In his retirement he wrote A Guide to Diplomatic Practice, now known as 'Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice' – this manual is widely used today, and has been updated several times by distinguished diplomats, notably Lord Gore-Booth. The sixth edition edited by Sir Ivor Roberts was published by Oxford University Press in 2009, and is over 700 pages long.
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