SINCE ITS FORMATION out of London's University College and King's College in 1916, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) has had the overt purpose, more than perhaps any other University college, of serving the British nation. As its motto ‘Knowledge is Power’ asserts, the School has had a mission to train experts and foster knowledge on the ‘Orient’ and Africa. From its beginnings, solid language training has been at its core, and this is certainly the case for Japanese Studies.

The first Professor of Japanese at SOAS was Frank J. Daniels (1900–1983), who was appointed in 1961. However, the first Professor of Japanese at the University of London was Joseph Henry Longford (1849–1925), who was appointed in 1902 to the Oriental Department of King's College London but he retired in 1916 when his department was moved to the newly established SOS (School of Oriental Studies, the School's formal title until 1938). Longford had had a career as a member of the Japan Consular Service for thirty-three years alongside Sir Ernest Satow and William George Aston before taking up the University of London post. He taught about Japan but does not seem to have taught language. He published several books on Japan (The Story of Old Japan, 1910; Japan of the Japanese, 1911) and edited the third volume of Murdoch's History of Japan (1926).

In his Inaugural Lecture, ‘Japanese Studies in the University of London and Elsewhere’, Daniels outlined Britain's efforts to develop resources for Japanese language learning and teaching. He cites a series of early publications on the language including Rutherford Alcock's Elements of Japanese Grammar (1861), W. G. Aston's Short Grammar of Spoken Japanese (1869), and Grammar of Written Japanese (1871). He notes also that Basil Hall Chamberlain, appointed Professor of Japanese and Philology at Tokyo University in 1896, was the first ‘British Professor of Japanese’. Chamberlain's A Simplified Grammar of the Japanese Language (Modern Written Style) (1886) was another important work.