Quick Facts
Biography
John Harington Gubbins (1852-1929) was a British linguist, consular official and diplomat.
Education
Gubbins attended Harrow School and would have gone on to Cambridge University, had family finances allowed.
Career
Gubbins was appointed a student interpreter in the British Japan Consular Service in 1871; English Secretary to the Conference at Tokyo for the Revision of the Treaties, after Ernest Satow left Japan in 1883, and on 1 June 1889 became Japanese Secretary at Tokyo.
He was employed in London at the Foreign Office from February to July 1894 in the Aoki-Kimberley negotiations which resulted in the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation (16 July 1894). He was, especially in retirement, a close friend of Satow's. He was elected the first President of the newly founded Royal Asiatic Society Korea Branch in 1900.
Despite having no university degree, Gubbins was awarded an honorary master's degree from Balliol College and was made Lecturer in Japanese language at Oxford University (1909–12). Lack of pupils led to his position being terminated.
Family
He was the father of Colin Gubbins.