New historical records shedding more light on the Japanese compiler of the first Russian-Japanese dictionary have surfaced in Britain, giving fresh insight into the life of the little-known author who drifted to Russia in 1728 after his ship was damaged in a storm.

Sammy Tsunematsu, the founder and director of the Soseki Museum in London, said the historical data, written in Latin by a St. Petersburg classics scholar, was found in the personal collection of an 18th century British physician named William Hunter at Glasgow University.

The documents consist of 12 pages of hand-written accounts compiled by Theothious Bayer, a Prussian-born teacher of classics at St. Petersburg Science Academy, Tsunematsu said.

One of the pages contains two signatures. One apparently belongs to the author of the Russian-Japanese dictionary, who is known in Japan only as "Gonza," and the other to a fellow shipwreck survivor known in Japan as "Souza."