Table Of ContentAT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE:
THE LIFE OF THOMAS B. GLOVER
For the peace activists of Nagakaski
AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE:
The Life Of Thomas B. Glover
Michael Gardiner
BIRLINN
First published in 2007 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
10 Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 IQS
www.birlinn.co.uk
Copyright © Michael Gardiner, 2007
The moral right of Michael Gardiner to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored or transmitted in any form without the express
written permission of the publisher.
ISBN 10: 1 84158 544 0
ISBN 13: 978 1 84158 544 4
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Typeset by Hewer Text (UK) Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed and bound by ScandBook AB, Smedjebacken, Sweden
Contents
List of Illustrations vi
Acknowledgements vii
1 Dejima 1
2 The Deep North 9
3 Chinese Whispers 21
4 A Chancer 35
5 At the Edge of Empire I: Greater Britain 45
6 The Way of the Sword 67
7 On the Eve 77
8 The Slippery Slope 83
9 Mint Imperialists 105
10 Another View of Samurai 113
11 Treasure Islands 119
12 Cowboy Consultancy 127
13 Beer and Honour 141
14 At the Edge of Empire II: Japan 153
15 The Butterfly Effect 169
16 Cultivation 181
17 Dejima 195
Works Consulted 201
Glossary 215
Place Names 217
Index 219
List of Illustrations
Thomas Blake Glover
Brochure for Ipponmatsu, Thomas Blake Glover’s house in Nagasaki
The plaque at Glover Garden in Nagasaki (Brian Burke-Gaffney)
Thomas Berry and Mary Glover, 1875 (Nagasaki Prefectural Library)
The Gym, Aberdeen (University of Aberdeen)
Tsuru Glover (Nagasaki Prefectural Library)
Takashima island
Takashima mine construction
Ho Sho Maru in Japan (Aberdeen Maritime Museum)
Jo Sho Maru in Victoria Dock, Aberdeen (Aberdeen Maritime Museum)
The Glover family at the turn of the 20th century (Nagasaki Prefectural Library)
Thomas Blake Glover trout fishing at Nikko
Tomisaburo visiting his family in Fochabers, Aberdeenshire, 1903 (Nagasaki
Prefectural Library)
Mitsubishi offices (Yokohama shashin)
Kirin beer bottle label, 1889 (Kirin Holdings Co. Ltd)
Tomisaburo and Waka on vacation
Fancy-dress ball, late Meiji period
Acknowledgements
he opinions in this account do not reflect those of the sources I have
T
consulted, or those who have helped with the writing. But for their
generous time, advice and encouragement, I would like to thank: Alex
McKay, Brian Burke-Gaffney, Anne Malcolm, Billy Watson, Loraine Noble,
Ian Watson, James Flett, Tom Glover, Alan Spence, Duncan Rice, Neville
Moir, Alison Rae, Kenny Redpath, Lee McRonald, Graham Donaldson,
Yamaguchi Masahiro, Sugiyama Shinya, Kyoko Gardiner, Bill Cooper,
Geraldine Cooke, Lisa Moylett, Ishihara Chikae, the librarians at Nagasaki
Prefectural Library and at their photo archive, the librarians at the Queen
Mother Library and Special Collections at Aberdeen University, the librarians
at the National Library of Scotland, die librarians at Nagasaki Atomic Bomb
Museum and at their photo archive, Nagasaki Tourist Board, Brig o’ Balgownie
Rotary, Chris Henry and the staff at the Museum of Scottish Lighthouses.
ONE
Dejima
arly afternoon, 19 September. At 33 degrees, the weather is typical for
E
Nagasaki. The wisterias are a lilac deep enough to cling to the clothes.
The dragonflies are aircraft circling the ponds. The cicadas are deafening.
Cicadas only sing for a few weeks, then fall from the trees and cover the
ground like walnut shells. They have to sing deafeningly to be heard over
the mobile phones.
Below, a view of a long channel leading into a bay. Down there the
protagonist sailed into Japan, on 19 September. 1859 was not a year of
typical weather. The dragonflies were subject to delays, the cicadas were
too confused to sing themselves to death, and the passengers of Thomas
Glover’s ship had no view of the city, because the fog was too thick. On
a clearer day, Glover would have seen lush mountains crowding in over
him, an island chain funnelling him into the harbour, and off to the east,
Nagasaki city centre, which will be officially off limits until the last few
years of his life.
This is the scene looking down from the Glover Garden, set around
the cruciform house which was his, and later became a tourist attraction.
Here, the turmoil of the 1860s is suggested, its civil wars, its assassinations,
and its intrigues. A busload of tourists stroll past, some turning the bells
of flowers upwards to their noses. The tourists talk to one another,
making a point of not listening to the young guide: they’ve earned the
right not to.
What the guide might be trying to explain, as she passes the imperious
European-looking house on the hill, is something like this. Thomas Glover
had a hand in the education of some of the samurai - the ruling caste
of Japanese society — who would become influential politicians after the
change of government in 1868. He sold the Japanese Imperial Navy its
first great ships and the equipment to become self-sufficient. He was the
country’s first major industrialist in the European sense. He was involved
with the project to create Japan’s first mint. He founded the first modern
domestic brewing company, which later became Kirin. He helped set
2 AT THE EDGE OF EMPIRE
the scene - the guide is less likely to be saying - for an Anglo-Japanese
relationship that ensured alliance in World War One. With his son, he
introduced trawl fishing to the country. He came, it says in the garden
brochure
to Nagasaki in 1859 and established Glover & Co., a trading business
and shipping agency. Later he was instrumental in the introduction
of shipbuilding, coal mining, railways and various other modem indus
tries to Japan. He was also a staunch supporter of the young samurai
and feudal clans rebelling against the feudal government, and in that
way he played a vital role in the turbulent political changes in Japan
at the time of the Meiji Restoration.
The word staunch flattens Glover’s life into one spent dedicated to forces
understood in anachronistic terms as pro-democracy. But, as a freetrading
entrepreneur, many of his actions were improvised, inconsistent, and
dictated by changing circumstances. Still, this mini-biography has also
been the version of the Glover story usually told in Scotland. Glover was
modem, he inspired Madam Butterfly, he was staunch.
Glover himself might have humphed at this. His version of the story
might have been a bit more raw.
He was bom into a middling position in a big family. He had few educa
tional opportunities, was rowdy in school, and was possessed of a restless
desire to make himself heard, which was as likely to get him into trouble
as to bring him success. When an opportunity to leave home came up, it
was obvious to him that if he stayed, he would end up in the shadow of
his more educated older brothers. He grew up around the smell not of
wisteria but of herring, which sucked in fishermen from around Northern
Europe. He befriended foreign traders around harbours, and early in life
learned to associate strange ships with opportunity. A gruff personability,
financial ambition and sheer luck would turn him into a lynchpin of modem
Japanese government. He was willing to take great risks to achieve his
ambitions, and he developed a knack of putting himself in the right place
at the right time.
Soon after his own lifetime Glover disappeared from public view. This
wasn’t because he didn’t have high standing in Nagasaki: by the time of his
passing he was seen as an asset on a national level. Diplomatic histories
