Professor Geoffrey Bownas read Greats and Chinese at Oxford University www.queens.ox.ac.uk. He established the Department of Japanese Studies in Oxford University in 1954 and then became the University of Sheffield’s first Professor of Japanese Studies in 1965, pioneering the combination of the study of Japanese with the social sciences. On his retirement in 1980 he was made Emeritus Professor www.shef.ac.uk. He studied in Kyoto University www.kyoto-u.ac.jp 1952-54, with Professor Shigeki Kaizuka.

He has written and broadcast on Japan since the mid-1950s. His books include New Writing in Japan (1972), edited with Mishima Yukio, Business in Japan (1974 and 1980), co-edited with Paul Norbury, and Japan and the New Europe (1991), a special report for the Economist Intelligence Unit.

He was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure with Sun's Rays in 1999 and received the CBE in 2003 - both for services to Japanese Studies and Anglo-Japanese relations. He has worked as consultant to a number of companies and organisations, including BEAMA, BL-Rover at the time of its collaboration with Honda Motor, and AMEC when Watson Steel was a member of the consortium building Kansai International Airport.

He is Trustee and Special Advisor on Japan to the Foundation for International Education www.fie.org.uk , and is Vice-President of the Institute of Linguists, who's flagship Threlford Memorial Lecture he delivered in 2002 www.iol.org.uk.

His memoirs, Japanese Journeys, writings and recollections on his personal encounter with Japan, spanning the years 1952-2004, was published late in 2005. He has visited Japan regularly since the 1950s and loves cricket, sake and claret.

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