Holme, Ringer & Company

Holme, Ringer & Company Holme, Ringer & Company The Rise and Fall of a British Enterprise in Japan (1868–1940) By Brian Burke-Gaffney LEIDEN • BOSTON 2013 Cover illustration: Sydney Ringer’s certificate of consular status issued by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 7 December 1939. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Burke-Gaffney, Brian. Holme, Ringer & Company : the rise and fall of a British enterprise in Japan (1868-1940) / by Brian Burke-Gaffney. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-23017-0 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Holme, Ringer & Company. 2. Great Britain-- Commerce--Japan--History. 3. Japan--Commerce--Great Britain--History. 4. Trading companies-- Great Britain--History. 5. Business enterprises, Foreign--Japan--History. 6. Merchants, Foreign--Japan--History. I. Title. HF3508.J3B87 2012 382.06ʼ552--dc23 2012035989 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-23017-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-24321-7 (e-book) Copyright 2013 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorisation to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper. For Elizabeth Newton Richard Bjergfelt and Wendy Herbert CONTENTS Acknowledgements ��ix Prologue.......................................................................................................................xi Note on Romanisation of Japanese Names and Words ��xv List of Figures �� xvii 1 Beginnings in England and China ��1 2 Revival of British Commercial Activity in Japan........................................7 3 Establishment and Growth of Holme, Ringer & Co. �� 21 4 Family Affairs �� 39 5 Economic Expansion �� 49 6 The Dream Hotel �� 75 7 Whaling and Fishing.....................................................................................101 8 Wuriu Shokwai and the Shimonoseki Connection ��113 9 The Second Generation ��125 10 Roaring Twenties, Souring Thirties ��139 11 Dogs of War ��161 12 Mountains and Rivers Remain...................................................................193 Bibliography ��223 Appendix I Ringer Family Tree ��227 Appendix II Holme, Ringer & Company (Wuriu Shokwai) Agency list for 1918 ��229 Index ��233 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The former Ringer family houses in Nagasaki and Shimonoseki have been designated as heritage sites and carefully preserved by the Japanese gov- ernment. To date, however, little has been done to shed light on the achievements of Holme, Ringer & Co. or the life and work of Ringer family members during their stay in Japan from the pre-Meiji years to the out- break of the Second World War. Harold S. Williams’ essay The Story of Holme, Ringer & Co. Ltd. in Western Japan, 1868–1968 was published on the company centennial in 1968, but only in a small private edition. The present research project began in early 2007 when the author vis- ited Canberra to study the Harold S. Williams Collection at the National Library of Australia. I would like to thank Dr Keiko Tamura of the ANU College of Asia & the Pacific and Mayumi Shinozaki and the other staff of the National Library of Australia for their kind assistance in viewing and recording the documents related to Holme, Ringer & Co. The next breakthrough came in the form of Elizabeth Newton, who paid an incognito visit to Nagasaki in 2007. The author had the good for- tune to meet her during her stay and to call on her at her home in Whitby, North Yorkshire, the following year. By coincidence, Richard Bjergfelt, grandson of Freddy and Alcidie Ringer and Elizabeth’s second cousin, wrote to Nagasaki City around the same time offering to donate family heirlooms to Glover Garden. Richard kindly invited the author to his home in Gloucestershire and further extended the line of communication by introducing another second cousin, Wendy Herbert, granddaughter of Lina and Willmott H. Lewis. Needless to say, Elizabeth, Richard and Wendy provided a wealth of information about the activities of the Ringer family in both Japan and England. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for their generous cooperation. Special thanks also go to Takemoto Kazuhiro (longtime employee and current president of Holme, Ringer & Co.) and to the late Tomita Kaneyasu (son of Ringer family gar- dener Tomita Ikutarō) for their invaluable advice. I would also like to express gratitude to Paul Norbury, Nozomi Goto and the staff of Brill Academic Publishers for their encouragement and support. The present work relied heavily on the English-language newspapers published in Nagasaki from the early Meiji Period to 1928, during which time hardly a single issue rolled off the presses without some reference to x acknowledgement Holme, Ringer & Co. Contemporary Japanese newspapers provided an alternative viewpoint. The British and American consular records preserved at the National Archives in the two countries, as well as the GHQ- SCAP files concerning the Ringer properties, shed further light on the company business and the activities of family members. The author’s investigations into the consular records and other sources at home and abroad were facilitated by research grants from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. I hope that the result of these efforts will illuminate a dark cranny in Japanese history and serve as a stepping stone for further research and discussion on the period in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when a few expatriates from Britain and other countries made Japan their home, contributed to that country’s remarkable growth, but found it impossible to stay. Brian Burke-Gaffney Nagasaki, Japan Summer 2012 PROLOGUE When it opened for business in Norwich, England in 1897, the Royal Hotel boasted the latest in architectural technology and building standards, everything from fireproofed stairwells to mechanical lifts and ventilation shafts, as well as an elaborately decorated marble foyer, baronial gables, turrets and pinnacles, and rich red stonework exuding the confidence and noble aspirations of the late Victorian period. The Nagasaki Hotel appeared on the other side of the world only a few months later. The elegant brick-and timber building was the work of British architect Josiah Conder, first professor of architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering in Tokyo and ‘father of modern Japanese modern architecture’. The four-storey hotel featured amenities and beau- ties commensurate with those of the Royal Hotel in Norwich: finely- appointed rooms, dining facilities for a hundred guests, private telephones, in-house electric plant, and dynamos of the same type as those installed in the US Mint – along with the added luxury of verandas with French win- dows looking down on the blue water of Nagasaki Harbour. Nagasaki was basking in unprecedented prosperity as a port-of-call for merchantmen and warships from Britain, Russia, France, the United States and other countries. The construction of the Kyūshū Railway had reached completion the same year, absorbing the once isolated town into the network of overland transportation stretching to the urban centres of Osaka and Tokyo. Foreign tourists were arriving by the thousands, searching for traces of Madame Chrysanthème and Madame Butterfly and spilling their money in souvenir shops, bars and brothels in the laby- rinth of old streets. The Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, sprawling along the shore of Akunoura and Tategami opposite the foreign settlement, was producing – with the indispensable

Load more