When captain Francis (Frank) Brinkley died aged 73 in Tokyo in October 1912, the anonymous commentator in the Annual Registrar wrote that he had been the ‘chief interpreter of Japanese ideas and views to the Western world’, through his journalism and scholarship. Brinkley's long residence in Japan, spanning over forty years, his varied interests, reflected in his published works, his links with some of the great leaders of the Meiji period, and his journalism, all seemed to qualify him as one who would rank with Satow, Aston and Chamberlain as one of the giants of Britain's involvement in Japan.

Today, however, Brinkley's name, while occasionally remembered in Japan, especially as a journalist – he features in the Kodansha Encyclopaedia of Japan, for example – is hardly known outside a very small circle in the West. His books on art and history have never been reprinted. Only his Dictionary, which in 1896 replaced the earlier dictionary by J. C. Hepburn as a prime tool for foreigners learning Japanese, remains in somewhat limited use as a guide to Meiji usage.

THE SOLDIER AND YATOI

Brinkley was born in Ireland, and went to school in Dublin. There are no available details of his family background, although at his death there were references to his coming from a ‘good Irish family’. Although the editor of the Japan Punch, in 1883 lumped him in with Parnell as a ‘self boiled lost potato’, suggesting that he return to join other potatoes, evidence from editorial writing in the Japan Mail, the newspaper which he owned from 1881 until his death, indicates that Brinkley came from a Unionist rather than a Nationalist background; the Mail regularly attacked Irish revolutionaries and Irish ingratitude at British rule, and was particularly scathing about the activities of Irish-American groups. It was also generally unsympathetic to Roman Catholic missionaries, which perhaps points to Brinkley coming from a Protestant background.

Brinkley joined the army, passed out from the artillery school at Woolwich in south London, and joined the Royal Artillery as a second lieutenant. In 1867, he went to Hong Kong as private secretary and ADC to the Governor, Sir Richard MacDonnell, who was almost certainly a relative. He appears to have held this post for only one year, for all records agree that he was in Japan by late 1867.