AT 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