INTRODUCTION

JOHN WHITEHEAD, who died on 8 November 2013, aged eighty-one, was British ambassador to Japan from 1987 to 1992, He had served in Tokyo three times before his appointment as ambassador and was an accomplished linguist speaking good Japanese as well as German. He made an outstanding contribution to Anglo-Japanese relations not only through his service as a diplomat in Tokyo, but also after his retirement through his work for Japan related organizations in London. In Tokyo, as ambassador, he worked hard to promote Japanese investment in Britain and British exports, visible and invisible to Japan.

EASRLY LIFE AND DIPLOMATIC CAREER

John Stainton Whitehead was born 20 September 1932. The only child of teaching parents, whose schools moved to Hertfordshire for the war years, he was evacuated as a small boy to his grandmother’s cottage in the Vale of Evesham where he had a strict but happy childhood. On his return home to North London at the end of the war it was decided that he should go to Christ's Hospital in Horsham at the age of eleven. His father died when John was thirteen. The loss of his father at such an early age resulted in a rather unhappy few years at school. It was only through the persistence of his mother that he was granted an interview at Hertford College, Oxford; he attended this in his blue coat and yellow stockings. He was, many years later and with much pleasure and satisfaction, made an almoner (a governor) of the school.

After national service in the army from 1950 to 1952 he went to Hertford College, Oxford, where he studied modern languages graduating with honours in 1955. He then joined the Foreign Service. After a brief introductory period in the Foreign Office he was posted to Tokyo as a language student. After his initial training he worked in the chancery and acted as private secretary to Sir Oscar Morland then ambassador to Japan.

In a chapter (33) entitled ‘The Beginning of a Long Association: John Whitehead Remembers’ in Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views; Post-War Japan Through British Eyes he gave a vivid picture of his first years in Japan as a language student and junior officer in the embassy.