INTRODUCTION

IN 1907, THE London Publishers, E. Marlborough & Co. printed a one-volume book entitled Japanese Self-Taught & Grammar as part of its Self-Taught Series. The volume contained two books: Japanese Self- Taught by William James Simmie Shand and Japanese Grammar Self- Taught (second edition) by Henry John Weintz; both books were also published as separate volumes by the same publishing company. W.J.S. Shand was the director of the School of Japanese Language and Literature at Birkbeck Bank Chambers in London, while H.J. Weintz was the author of a number of other Japanese learning books: Hossfeld's Japanese Grammar (1904), Appendix to Hossfeld's Japanese Grammar (1905), Hossfeld's Japanese Reader (1906) from Hirschfeld Brothers (London) as well as Japanese Grammar Self-Taught (first edition)(1904) all published by E. Marlborough & Co. The two authors had markedly different relationships with Japan, Japanese people and the Japanese language.

W.J.S. Shand had worked as a businessman for twenty-seven years in Yokohama. H.J. Weintz, on the other hand, never visited Japan and there is little evidence of his having had contacts with Japanese people in Britain. W.J.S. Shand ran a Japanese language school in London for more than four-and-a-half years. H.J. Weintz published self-learning books not only for Japanese but also for Spanish, French and German. He appears to have been a polyglot, with Japanese just one of the many languages he ‘mastered’.

W.J.S. SHAND

William James Simmie Shand was born in Turiff, Aberdeenshire, Scotland on 9 April 1850. He was the sixth son of James Shand (1806–1853) and Margaret Shand (neé Allan) (1812–1894). The most distinguished of his six brothers was Alexander Allan Shand (1844–1930), who went on to become a well-known banker and introduced bookkeeping (‘boki’ in Japanese) into Japan.

In 1864, at the age of twenty, Allan Shand was appointed acting manager of the office of the Chartered Mercantile Bank in Yokohama.A number of years later, W.J.S. Shand followed his brother to Japan, arriving probably in 1871 at around the age of twentyone, to take up the post of clerk at Wilkin & Robison, merchants and insurance agents in Yokohama. (When W.J.S. Shand was thirteen years old, he had been nominated to a Navy cadetship, and had first tried to develop a career in the Navy.) He continued to work for Wilkin & Robison in Yokohama as a clerk probably until about 1880.