Japan–United Kingdom relations

• 1577. Richard Wylles writes about the people, customs and manners of Giapan in the History of Travel published in London.
• 1580. Richard Hakluyt advises the first English merchants to find a new trade route via the Northwest passage to trade wool and silver with Japan (sending two ships, the George and William, returning unsuccessfully by Christmas the same year).[1]
• 1587. Two young Japanese men named Christopher and Cosmas sailed on a Spanish galleon to California, where their ship was captured by Thomas Cavendish. Cavendish brought the two Japanese men with him to England where they spent approximately three years before going again with him on his last expedition to the South Atlantic where they were heading to Japan to begin trade relations. They are the first known Japanese men to have set foot in the British Isles.[2]

William Adams (1564–1620)

• 1600. William Adams, a seaman from Gillingham, Kent, was the first English adventurer to arrive in Japan. Acting as an advisor to the Tokugawa shōgun, he was renamed Miura Anjin, granted a house and land, and spent the rest of his life in his adopted country. He also became one of the first known foreign samurai.
• 1605. John Davis, the famous English explorer, was killed by Japanese pirates off the coast of Thailand, thus becoming the first known Englishman to be killed by a Japanese.[3]

The 1613 letter of King James I remitted to Tokugawa Ieyasu (Preserved in the Tokyo University archives)

• 1613. Following an invitation from William Adams in Japan, the English captain John Saris arrived at Hirado Island in the ship Clove with the intent of establishing a trading factory. Adams and Saris travelled to Suruga Province where they met with Tokugawa Ieyasu at his principal residence in September before moving on to Edo where they met Ieyasu's son Hidetada. During that meeting, Hidetada gave Saris two varnished suits of armour for King James I, today housed in the Tower of London.[4] On their way back, they visited Tokugawa once more, who conferred trading privileges on the English through a Red Seal permit giving them "free licence to abide, buy, sell and barter" in Japan.[5] The English party headed back to Hirado Island on 9 October 1613. However, during the ten-year activity of the company between 1613 and 1623, apart from the first ship (Clove in 1613), only three other English ships brought cargoes directly from London to Japan.
• 1623. The Amboyna massacre was perpetrated by the Dutch East India Company. After the incident England closed its commercial base at Hirado Island, now in Nagasaki Prefecture, without notifying Japan. After this, the relationship ended for more than two centuries.
• 1625. A number of documents including the Iaponian Charter, are the first published translated Japanese documents into English by Samuel Purchas

• 1639. Tokugawa Iemitsu announced his Sakoku policy. Only the Dutch Republic was permitted to retain limited trade rights.
• 1640. Uriemon Eaton the son of William Eaton (a worker at the EIC post in Japan) and Kamezo (a Japanese woman), becomes the first Japanese to join Academia in England as a scholar at Trinity College Cambridge.
• 1668. 25 February. Henry Oldenburg addresses the Royal Society on the letters of Richard Cocks, particularly noting English trading privileges from the time of Cocks, striking new interest in trade with Japan in England.
• 1672. The EIC factories are set up at modern day Taiwan and Tongking with the intention by the British to be used as bases for further trade with Japan
• 1673. An English ship named Returner visited Nagasaki harbour, and asked for a renewal of trading relations. But the Edo shogunate refused. The government blamed it on the withdrawal 50 years earlier, and found it unacceptable that Charles II of England married Catherine of Braganza, who was from Portugal, and favoured the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1683. Molly Verney begins learning Japanning as a handicraft in London
• 1703. James Cunninghame FRS attempts to initiate trade with Japan from Cochinchina and the chaplain James Pound in his service notes of VOC activity in Japan until they are attacked by locals in 1705
• 1713. Daniel Defoe writes of William Adams and his 'famous voyage to Japan' in his satire Memoirs of Count Tariff
• 1727. Johann Caspar Scheuchzer translates and publishes the first edition of Engelbert Kaempfers History of Japan in London
• 1731. Arthur Dobbs advocates the finding of the North West Passage to 'be able to send a Squadron of ships, Even to force Japan into a Beneficial Treaty of Commerce with Britain.'
• 1740. Robert Petre, 8th Baron Petre imports the first Camellia japonica into England
• 1741. The Middleton Expedition is launched to find the Northwest Passage with orders to not engage 'Japaneze ships' until the following year should they come across one, with plans halting to trade or settle Japan owing to the circumstances surrounding the Seven Years' War
• 1745. Thomas Astley reprints by popular demand the Logbook of William Adams in his A New General Collection of Voyages and Travels ; in Europe, Asia, Africa and America under Nippon[6]
• 1791. James Colnett sails the HMS Argonaut from Canton to Japan becoming the second unsuccessful attempt at trade with Sakoku Japan.
• 1796. William Robert Broughton surveys the North-western coast of Japan, becoming shipwrecked on the coast of Miyako-jima
• 1808. The Nagasaki Harbour Incident: HMS Phaeton enters Nagasaki and lays an unsuccessful ambush on Dutch shipping.
• 1812. The British whaler HMS Saracen (1812) stopped at Uraga, Kanagawa and took on water, food, and firewood
• 1813. Thomas Raffles attempts trade with Japan under a British flag to oust Dutch trade monopoly, only for the ooperhoofd to fly the ships under Dutch colours, being rescinded by Governor-General of India on the basis of excessive expense in 1814, also finally being halted in May 1815 by Raffles after the handover of the British colony of Java to the Dutch
• 1819. The third British ship 'The Brothers' piloted by Captain Peter Gordon, visited Uraga on 17 June seeking to trade with Japan, unsuccessful at Edo to get any treaty
• 1819. August 3. The first British Whaler HMS Syren begins to exploit the Japan whaling grounds.
• 1824. 12 English whalers stray ashore looking for food and are apprehended by Aizawa Seishisai leading to new repulsion acts against foreign vessels.
• 1830. The convict crew of the Cyprus piloted by William Swallow are repelled under the repulsion acts of 1825.
• 1831. Discussions are held at the British East India Company to hold a base on the Bonin Islands to trade with Japan and the Ryukyuu Archipelago
• 1832. Otokichi, Kyukichi and Iwakichi, castaways from Aichi Prefecture, crossed the Pacific and were shipwrecked on the west coast of North America. The three Japanese men became famous in the Pacific Northwest and probably inspired Ranald MacDonald to go to Japan. They joined a trading ship to the UK, and later Macau. One of them, Otokichi, took British citizenship and adopted the name John Matthew Ottoson. He later made two visits to Japan as an interpreter for the Royal Navy.
• 1840. Indian Oak becomes shipwrecked off the coast of Okinawa and a junk is built by Okinawan peoples for the survivors
• 1842. On the basis of the British naval victory at the First Opium War, the Repel Edicts are renounced by the Bakufu.
• 1843. Herbert Clifford founds the Loochoo Naval Mission
• 1850. Bishop Smith arrives at Ryukyu to carry out missionary work

• 1854. 14 October. The first limited Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty was signed by Admiral Sir James Stirling and representatives of the Tokugawa shogunate (Bakufu).
• 1855. In an effort to find the Russian fleet in the Pacific Ocean during the Crimean war, a French-British naval force reached the port of Hakodate, which was open to British ships as a result of the Friendship Treaty of 1854, and sailed further north, seizing the Russian-American Company's possessions on the island of Urup in the Kuril archipelago. The Treaty of Paris (1856) restitutes the island to Russia.[7]
• 1858. 26 August. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed by the Scotsman Lord Elgin and representatives of the Tokugawa shogunate for Japan, after the Harris Treaty was concluded. Britain obtained extraterritorial rights on Japanese with the British Supreme Court for China and Japan, in Shanghai. A British iron paddle schooner named Enpiroru was presented to the Tokugawa administration by Bruce as a present for the Emperor from Queen Victoria.
• 1861. 5 July. The British legation in Edo was attacked.

The First Japanese Embassy to Europe, in 1862

• 1862. The shōgun sends the First Japanese Embassy to Europe, led by Takenouchi Yasunori.
• 1862. 14 September. The Namamugi Incident occurred within a week of the arrival of Ernest Satow in Japan.
• 1862–75. British Military Garrison established at Yamate, Yokohama.
• 1863. The Chōshū Five began their education at University College London under the guidance of Professor Alexander William Williamson.
• 1863. Bombardment of Kagoshima by the Royal Navy. (Anglo-Satsuma War).
• 1864. Bombardment of Shimonoseki by Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States.
  

  The Blue Bower (1865) sitter poses with a Koto
• 1865. With the influx of Japanese imports, artists such as Rossetti and Crane began to be influenced by Japanese objects and Ukiyo-e prints
• 1865. The Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) from Britain was established in Hong Kong.
• 1865. Chōshū Domain bought the warship Union from Glover and Co., an agency of Jardine Matheson established in Nagasaki, in the name of Satsuma Domain which was not against the Tokugawa shogunate then.
• 1866 HSBC established a Japanese branch in Yokohama.
• 1867. The Icarus affair, an incident involving the murder of two British sailors in Nagasaki, leading to increased diplomatic tensions between Britain and the Tokugawa shogunate.
• 1868. Coup d'état by Chōshū Domain and Satsuma Domain achieved the Meiji Restoration.
• 1869. Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh becomes the first European prince to visit Japan arriving on HMS Galatea on 4 September 1869. Audience with the Emperor Meiji in Tokyo.
• 1872. The Iwakura mission visited Britain as part of a diplomatic and investigative tour of the United States and Europe.
• 1873. The Imperial College of Engineering opened with Henry Dyer as principal.

Photo at Knightsbridge by W. S. Gilbert, c. 1885

• 1879 British Court for Japan was established in Yokohama.
• 1880. Japan government established Yokohama Specie Bank for only foreign transaction bank in Japan, with the support of HSBC.
• 1881. Azusa Ono suggests using the British model for the new Japanese constitution
• 1886. Normanton incident British merchant vessel sinks off the coast of Wakayama Prefecture. Crew escape while 25 Japanese passengers perish. Widespread Japanese public outrage as subsequent Board of Enquiry under extraterritorial court finds the British crew not guilty. The case is later reopened, and the crew are given three month sentences.
• 1885–87. Japanese exhibition at Knightsbridge, London.[8]
• 1887–89. Jurist Francis Taylor Piggott, the son of ex-MP Jasper Wilson Johns, was inaugurated as a legislational consultant for Itō Hirobumi, then and the first Prime Minister of Japan.
• 1890. Government of Japan established the Constitution of Imperial Japan which House of Peers was not come with Universal suffrage.
• 1891. The Japan Society of London is founded by Arthur Diosy.
• 1894. The Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation was signed in London on 16 July. The treaty abolished extraterritoriality in Japan for British subjects with effect from 17 July 1899
• 1899. Extraterritorial rights for British subjects in Japan came to an end.
• 1900. (January). Last sitting of the British Court for Japan.

• 1902. The Japanese–British alliance was signed in London on 30 January. It was a diplomatic milestone that saw an end to Britain's splendid isolation, and removed the need for Britain to build up its navy in the Pacific.[9][10]
• 1905. The Japanese–British alliance was renewed and expanded. Official diplomatic relations were upgraded, with ambassadors being exchanged for the first time.
• 1907. In July, British thread company J. & P. Coats launched Teikoku Seishi and began to thrive.
• 1908. The Japan-British Society was founded in order to foster cultural and social understanding.
• 1909 Fushimi Sadanaru returns to Britain to convey the thanks of the Japanese government for British advice and assistance during the Russo-Japanese War.

Guide to the Japan–British Exhibition of 1910.

• 1910. Sadanaru represents Japan at the state funeral of Edward VII, and meets the new king George V at Buckingham Palace.
• 1910. The Japan–British Exhibition is held at Shepherd's Bush in London. Japan made a successful effort to display its new status as a great power by emphasizing its new role as a colonial power in Asia.[11]
• 1911. The Japanese – British alliance was renewed with approval of the dominions.
• 1913. The IJN Kongō, the last of the British-built warships for Japan's navy, enters service.
• 1914–1915. Japan joined World War I as Britain's ally under the terms of the alliance and captured German-occupied Tsingtao (Qingdao) in China Mainland. They also help Australia and New Zealand capture archipelagos like the Marshall Islands and the Mariana Islands.
• 1915. The Twenty-One Demands would have given Japan varying degrees of control over all of China, and would have prohibited European powers from extending their influence in China any further. It is eventually scrapped.[12]
• 1917. The Imperial Japanese Navy helps the Royal Navy and allied navies patrol the Mediterranean against Central Powers ships.
• 1917–1935. Close relationships between the two country steadily worsens.[13]
• 1919. Japan proposes a racial equality clause in negotiations to form the League of Nations, calling for "making no distinction, either in law or in fact, on account of their race or nationality."[14] Britain, which supports the White Australia policy, cannot assent, and the proposal is rejected.
• 1921. Britain indicates it will not renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 primarily because of opposition from the United States and also Canada.[15]
• 1921. Crown Prince Hirohito visited Britain and other Western European countries. It was the first time that a Japanese crown prince had traveled overseas.
• 1921. Arrival in September of the Sempill Mission in Japan, a British technical mission for the development of Japanese Aero-naval forces. It provided the Japanese with flying lessons and advice on building aircraft carriers; the British aviation experts kept close watch on Japan after that.[16]
• 1922. Washington Naval Conference concluding in the Four-Power Treaty, Five-Power Treaty, and Nine-Power Treaty; major naval disarmament for 10 years with sharp reduction of Royal Navy & Imperial Navy. The Treaties specify that the relative naval strengths of the major powers are to be UK = 5, US = 5, Japan = 3, France = 1.75, Italy = 1.75. The powers will abide by the treaty for ten years, then begin a naval arms race.[17]
• 1922. Edward, Prince of Wales travelling on HMS Renown, arrives in Yokohama on 12 April for a four-week official visit to Japan.
• 1923. The Japanese -British alliance was officially discontinued on 17 August in response to U.S. and Canadian pressure.
• 1930. The London disarmament conference angers Japanese Army and Navy. Japan's navy demanded parity with the United States and Britain, but was rejected; it maintained the existing ratios and Japan was required to scrap a capital ship. Extremists assassinate Japan's prime minister, and the military takes more power.[18]
• 1931. September. Japanese Army seizes control of Manchuria, which China has not controlled in decades. It sets up a puppet government. Britain and France effectively control the League of Nations, which issues the Lytton Report in 1932, saying that Japan had genuine grievances, but it acted illegally in seizing the entire province. Japan quits the League, Britain takes no action.[19][20]
• 1934. The Royal Navy sends ships to Tokyo to take part in a naval parade in honour of the late Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō, one of Japan's greatest naval heroes, the "Nelson of the East".
• 1937. The Kamikaze, a prototype of the Mitsubishi Ki-15, travels from Tokyo to London, the first Japanese-built aircraft to land in Europe, for the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
• 1938 Yokohama Specie Bank acquired HSBC.[21]
• 1939. The Tientsin Incident almost causes an Anglo-Japanese war when the Japanese blockade the British concession in Tientsin, China.

• 1941. 7/8 December.The Pacific War begins as Japan attacks British possessions in the Far East.
• 1941–42. In the first few months of war Japanese forces race from victory to victory. They capture Hong Kong, British Borneo, Malaya, Singapore and Burma.

Japanese air raid on Singapore (8 February 1942)

• The surrender of Singapore is a major defeat for the British; over hundred thousand British and Commonwealth soldiers become prisoners of war.[22] Many British and Commonwealth POWs die in very harsh conditions of captivity.
• 1944. The Japanese invasion of India via Burma ends in disaster. The resulting battles of Imphal and Kohima becomes the worst defeat on land to that date in Japanese history.[23]
• 1945. August. The last significant land battle of the Second World War involved British and Japanese forces. It took place in Burma – a failed Japanese breakout attempt in the Pegu Yomas.
• 1945. 2 September. Aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, Admiral Bruce Fraser is among the allied commanders formally accepting the surrender of Japan.
• 1945–46. British troops deploy Japanese Surrendered Personnel during the First Indochina War and the Indonesian Revolution in French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies. A battalion commander, Major Kido is recommended by General Philip Christison for a DSO.

• 1945–1951. Japan comes under allied occupation. The British Commonwealth Force occupy the western prefectures of Shimane, Yamaguchi, Tottori, Okayama and Hiroshima and the territory of Shikoku Island. In 1951, this becomes British British Commonwealth Forces Korea with the commencement of the Korean war.
• 1948. The 1948 Summer Olympics was held in London. Japan did not participate.
• 1951. Treaty of San Francisco – the peace treaty in which Anglo-Japanese relations were normalized. The Japanese government accepts the judgements of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal. According to Peter Lowe, the British were still angry over the humiliation of the surrender of Singapore in 1942; resentment at American domination of the occupation of Japan; apprehension concerning renewed Japanese competition in textiles and shipbuilding; and bitterness regarding Japanese atrocities against British prisoners of war.[24]
• 1953. Nineteen-year-old Crown Prince Akihito (Emperor from 1989 to 2019), represents Japan at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
• 1953. The British Council in Japan was established.
• 1957. Japanese Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi decided to compensate the government of France and Banque de l'Indochine in pound sterling.[25]
• 1963. The University of Oxford set Japanese as a subject in its Oriental Institute (the Sub-Faculty of East Asian Studies).
• 1966. The Beatles played at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo to overwhelming adulation. This performance emphasized growing good will between Britain and Japan in their foreign relations policies.
• 1971. HIM Emperor Hirohito pays a state visit to the United Kingdom after an interval of 50 years.[26]
• 1975. Queen Elizabeth II pays a state visit to Japan.[27]
• 1978. Beginning of the BET scheme (British Exchange Teaching Programme) first advocated by Nicholas MacLean.[28]

Princess of Wales visited both in 1986 and 1995

• 1980s The British-Japanese Parliamentary Group was established in Britain in early 1980s.[29]
• 1983. Naruhito (now Emperor of Japan) studied at Merton College, Oxford, until 1985, and researched transport on the River Thames.
• 1986. Nissan Motors began to operate its car plant in Sunderland, as Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd.
• 1986. The Prince and Princess of Wales conducted a successful royal visit.
• 1987. JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) program starts when the BET scheme and the Fulbright scholarship are merged.
• 1988. The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation established.
• 1990. The Alumni Association for British JET Participants JETAA UK is established
• 1991. The first Sumo tournament to be held outside Japan is hosted at the Royal Albert Hall in London.[30]
• 1998. Emperor Akihito pays a state visit to the United Kingdom.[26][31]

• 2001. The year-long "Japan 2001" cultural-exchange project saw a major series of Japanese cultural, educational and sporting events held around the UK.
• 2001. JR West gifts a 0 Series Shinkansen (No. 22-141) to the National Railway Museum at York, she is the only one of her type to be preserved outside Japan.
• 2007. HIM Emperor Akihito pays his second state visit to the United Kingdom.

Second Japan-UK Foreign and Defence Ministerial Meeting on 8 January 2016 in Tokyo.

• 2011. UK sends over rescue men with rescue dogs and supplies to help the Japanese, after the 11 March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
• 2012. A UK trade delegation to Japan, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, announces an agreement to jointly develop weapons systems.
• February 2015. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge on an official visit tours areas devastated by the 2011 Tsunami including Fukushima, Ishinomaki, and Onagawa.[32]
• September 2016. Citing concerns for Japanese owned business operating in the United Kingdom in the wake of the European Union membership referendum, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs directly issues a 15-page memorandum on its own website requesting that the British Government strike a Brexit agreement safeguarding UK's current trading rights in the European Single Market.[33]
• December 2018. A new trade deal between Japan and the European Union which is hoped could also act as blue-print for post-Brexit trade between Japan and the UK was approved by the European Parliament.[34]
• September 2020. The UK and Japan agree a historic free trade agreement — the first made by the UK as an independent trading nation since leaving the European Union.[35]

See also the chronology on the website of British Embassy, Tokyo.[36]

• Terashima Munenori 1872–1873
• Kagenori Ueno 1874–1879
• Mori Arinori 1880–1884
• Masataka Kawase 1884–1893
• Aoki Shūzō 1894
• Katō Takaaki 1895–1900
• Hayashi Tadasu 1900–1905

• Hayashi Tadasu 1905–1906
• Komura Jutarō 1906–1908
• Katō Takaaki 2nd time, 1908–1912
• Katsunosuke Inoue 1913–1916
• Chinda Sutemi 1916–1920
• Gonsuke Hayashi 1920–1925
• Keishiro Matsui 1925–1928
• Matsudaira Tsuneo 1929–1935
• Shigeru Yoshida 1936–1938
• Mamoru Shigemitsu 1938–1941
• Shunichi Matsumoto 1952–1955
• Haruhiko Nishi 1955–1957
• Katsumi Ōno 1958–1964
• Morio Yukawa 1968–1972
• Haruki Mori 1972–?
• Masaki Orita 2001–2004
• Yoshiji Nogami 2004–2008
• Shin Ebihara 2008–2011
• Keiichi Hayashi 2011–2016
• Koji Tsuruoka 2016–present