TUCKED away in a North-East cemetery is a corner of Britain that will be forever Japan.

Weathered but still readable, a headstone marks the last resting place of Bysak Fukao. He died in the Tees in 1873 but now - probably for the first time in 131 years - one of his countrymen is planning to make a pilgrimage to his grave in Darlington's West Cemetery.

Bysak was an orphan from the ancient aristocratic Japanese class, the Samurais. He was a promising student, brought up by his uncle in Tokyo, and was selected by the governor of the province to travel to England to study further.

He arrived aged 16 in Darlington in 1871 to attend the Walworth Collegiate School in Pierremont Crescent.

Two years later, he took a job as an articled clerk at Messrs Raylton Dixon and Co, shipbuilders in Middlesbrough. But on November 14 that year, tragedy struck.

Bysak was strolling around Middlesbrough Docks with a friend when he fell about 18ft into the water and drowned.

The Northern Echo's report of his inquest concluded: "We can only deplore the sad calamity that cut short a career that gave promise of future success and deprived his native land of such a worthy subject."

Bysak's story is told in a recently-published book about Japanese people who lived in Victorian Britain. It was read by the consul general of the Japanese Embassy, Haruhisa Takeuchi, who was so moved that he did some further research.

"Mr Takeuchi e-mailed me through our website and he has expressed an interest in visiting Bysak's grave," said Susan Stahl, secretary of Darlington Historical Society. The society is cataloguing on the Internet every grave in the cemetery.

Bysak's headstone, which is engraved in Japanese on one side and English on the other, is one of more than 3,000 that have already been recorded.