1843–1928 · American orientalist, minister & author · in Japan 1870–1874
Griffis went to Japan in September 1870, served as Superintendent of Education in Echizen and taught chemistry and physics at the school that became Tokyo Imperial University, leaving in 1874. His 1876 book The Mikado’s Empire devoted a chapter to Japanese proverbs, and it is there that the oldest known English form of the two-graves saying appears — as a warning about calling down a curse. He is the recorder, not the author: he presented the line as a proverb already in circulation, and the modern “revenge” phrasing is not his.