Prior to Chamberlain, F. V. Dickins translated Japanese Lyrical Odes, but the outcome was far from perfect. In 1939 Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkokai published The Manyoshu, whose introduction said, “The first adequate work in this field appeared in 1880 in The Classical Poetry of the Japanese which was written by Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850-1935), then professor of Tokyo Imperial University and a foremost authority on Japanese classics.” Since the time of its publication The Classical Poetry of the Japanese has been the standard textbook among those interested in Japanese poetry.
Chamberlain came to Japan in 1873 and read his paper on The Use of Pillow-Words and Plays upon Words in Japanese Poetry in 1877 at the Asiatic Society of Japan. There he suggested that a careful study of the ancient poetry of Japan must precede any successful attempt to translate the Hebrew Psalms into Japanese. In the same year he read his own translation of The Maiden of Unai at the A. S. J. and in this translation we can see his style of rendering in rhyme well-established. In 1880 he published The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, the first orthodox study on Japanese poetry. He chose the verses from The Manyoshu, the Kokinshu, Yokyoku and Kyagen. All poems taken from The Manyoshu were cho-ka, longer poems of 5.7.5.....7.7 syllables, and the short stanza tanka of 5.7.5.7.7 syllables were taken out of The Kokinsha. They were all translated in accordance with traditional English prosody : in ballad style, elegiac stanza, heroic couplet and blank verses, etc.
Lectures on Japan, the collection of lectures Dr. Nitobe gave in the U.S.A. and Canada was published in 1936. In it he introduced ten poems out of The Manyoshu and The Kokinshu. He said, “I shall take a few typical pieces of Japanese poetry translated by some of the best English translators, chiefly Aston, Chamberlain and Waley.” He did not give the name of the translator of each poem, but it is easy to guess the translator from the way it is rendered. Chamberlain translated freely in rhyme in accordance with the traditional English prosody, while Aston and Waley were literalists.
In spite of Nitobe's apparent reference to Chamberlain's rhymed translation, Chamberlain had changed his rendering style after The Classical Poetry of the Japanese. Three years after the publication, his translation of the Kojiki appeared. This translation includes a number of tanka. Here we can see his shift from a free translator to a literalist. He rendered tanka word for word and explained his attitude : “The only object aimed at has been a rigid and literal conformity with the Japanese text.” In his next book, A Practical Introduction to the Study of Japanese Writing (1899) he showed a new word-for-word translation of the same tanka from the Kokinshtu that in The Classical Poetry of the Japanese he had already rendered in rhymed style. Chamberlain even declared openly in the preface of Japanese Poetry (1910), the revised edition of The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, that he had joined the camp of literalists.
In 1899 Aston published A History of Japanese Literature and it turned out to be an important work in the innovation of tanka in the Meiji Era. In this book, influenced by Chafnberlain's The Classical Poetry of the Japanese, he criticized Japanese poetry from the Westerner's point of view. Yosano Tekkan, quoting Aston's view on Japanese poetry in the early numbers of the Myojo, led the movement of Innovating tanka. This also shows that Chamberlain was a great pioneering scholar on Japanese poetry.

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B. H. Chamberlain was the first to acknowledge the Noh play as an authentic genre of Japanese literature; previously it had been regarded merely as a form of entertainment. He saw in Noh a lyric drama, distinctly indigenous to Japan both in its form and in its treatment and choice of themes.
B. H. Chamberlain came to Japan in 1873 and took up an abode at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo. Near his residence lived an old samurai, Shigeru Araki, who had served the Tokugawa Shogunate. Chamberlain became his private teacher of English. It was through Araki that Chamberlain was introduced to the Noh play. The Noh play had been patronized by the Shogunates since the time of Yoshimitsu Ashikaga. After the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the performance of the Noh play became an indispensable event on ceremonial occasions. An old retainer of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Araki had great pride in Noh, considering it as a glorious symbol of Japanese art. In the course of his frequent visits to the Noh theatre with Araki, Chamberlain must have been attracted by the Noh play texts, YOKYOKU, as well as by the theatrical performance itself.
In the tradition of the Noh play, a text with few references to the lines from such famous anthologies as the Manyoshu or the Kokinshu was considered to be mediocre and lacking overtones. The Noh play is inseparably interwoven with the tradition of Japanese poetry. Not only are many poems embedded in the dialogue, but also there are many instances of a Noh play whose theme derives from waka. Thus it was through Noh plays that Chamberlain entered the world of Japanese classical poetry.
About this time he was introduced to an aged poetess who had many associates among people of refined taste of the upper class. He owed his elegant and well-accented Japanese to her and her circle. Chamberlain expressed his thanks to her in the preface to THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE as follows;
“… the necessary preliminary studies would never have been successfully carried through but for the kind encouragement of the aged poetess Tachibana-no-Toseko.”
She published the waka anthology MEIJI-KASHU in which she included Chamberlain's wakas under the pen name Odo. He was also an associate of the Japanese comedian (kyogen-shi), Nohara, who copied twenty volumes of comedy texts for him.
Chamberlain shared his Japanese studies with Ernest Satow, an English diplomat in Tokyo. They were good friends. Satow gave to Chamberlain one hundred volumes of yokyoku which he had collected in 1870s.
After seven years of devoted studies, Chamberlain published THE CLASSICAL POETRY OF THE JAPANESE in London in 1880. It contains poems from the Manyoshu, the Kokinshu, and four Noh plays i.e. The Robe of Feathers, The Death-Stone, Life is A Dream, andNakamitsu, and also two Kyogen plays i.e. Ribs and Skin (Hone Kawa) andAbstraction (Za-Zen).
Chamberlain was probably the first translator of Noh plays. Dr. Sanki Ichikawa praised B. H. Chamberlain for introducing the Noh play to the world as early as the opening years of the Meiji Era.

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The legend of Urashima is told in English by several writers. The legend itself has been handed down in several versions. The earliest attempt at introducing this Japanese folk tale to English readers was made by B. H. Chamberlain, when he translated a poem on Urashima from the Manyoshu, the earliest Japanese anthology.
His translation was not a prose, but a poem after the manner of an English ballad, which is a favorite style with the English people in reciting the medieval legends. English and Japanese are quite different languages with almost antipodal characters. He believed that the Japanese poetry could be better understood by English readers when rendered in English poetic style. His early translations, including “Urashima”, was literary, but later his taste changed. He was no longer satisfied with the liberal translation. He wanted to be strictly faithful to the original text.
He wrote for English boys and girls four Japanese fairy tales, one of which is “Urashima.” It is adapted from a popular version of the fisher boy Urashima.

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It was in 1888 thatTHE OLD BAMBOO-HEWER'S STORY (Taketorimonogatari) was translated into English for the first time and published in London by F. V. Dickins. Eight years later, in 1906, he revised it completely and included it in hisPRIMITIVE & MEDIAEVAL JAPANESE TEXTS. In the preface he wrote, “I desire here to acknowledge my great indebtedness to the writings of Dr. Aston, Prof. B. H. Chamberlain, Dr. Karl Florenz and Sir Ernest Satow : to my friend, Mr. Minakata Kumagusu.”
Kumagusu stayed in London from 1892 to 1900. During his stay, he met F. V. Dickins, then registrar of University of London. According to Kumagusu's diary, Dickins showed him his translation ofTAKETORIMONOGATARIand asked for his opinion. On reading it, Kumagusu criticised it severely from his point of view as a Japanese. The diary says Dickins got very angry, because he was proud of his rendering. However, Dickins accepted Kumagusu's helpful advice. It took him eight years to revise it thoroughly. This shows that Dickins was fascinated by the story of Kaguyahime, simple, graceful and genuinely Japanese.

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In Japanese Poetry: The Uta (1919) Arthur Waley says, “It is chiefly through translations of another anthology, the Hyakunin-Isshu, that Japanese poetry is known to English readers. This collection of a ‘Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets’ was made in c. 1235 A. D. ”This shows that the HyakuninIs'shu was already known to English readers in 1919.
Earlier, in 1866, F. V. Dickins rendered it into English, the HYAK NIN IS'SHIU, JAPANESE LYRICAL ODES. Frederick Victor Dickins (1823-1915) was a medical officer in the British Navy and was stationed in Yokohama from 1861 to 1866. He learned the Japanese language of his personal interest. Returning to England, he published the HYAK NIN IS'SHIU.
“... whatever their intrinsic value may be, they (Hyakunin-Isshu) are extremely popular with the Japanese, and on that account, rather than for any literary merit they may possess, have I ventured to offer this English version of them to the public”, says F. V. Dickins in the preface to the HYAK NIN IS'SHU. These lines show his unfavorable view about the Odes. English Japanologists, like Chamberlain, Aston and Waley as well as Dickins, did not think highly of the Hyakunin-Isshu. Dickins introduced the poems to English readers because of their popularity among the Japanese.
From 1866 on F. V. Dickins' translation was printed four times in Japan. Since F. V. Dickins, the Hyakunin-Isshu has had seven translators: C. MacCauley, W. N. Porter, H. Saito, K. Yasuda, H. Honda, H. Miyata and Tom Galt. F. V. Dickins was the starting runner and the first pioneer in the translation of the Hyakunin-Isshu and Japanese poetry.

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