00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page i
NAGASAKI THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE, ‒ 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page ii
The battleship Kirishima undergoes final touches at the Misubishi Nagasaki Shipyard in DLDG.The Scottish-built hammerhead crane looms behind it. (Author’s collection) 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page iii
Nagasaki
THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE, 1854–1945
Brian Burke-Gaffney Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science
GLOBAL ORIENTAL 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page iv
NAGASAKI THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE, DKHG–DLGH by Brian Burke-Gaffney
First published ECCL by GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD PO Box EDL Folkestone Kent CTEC EWP UK
www.globaloriental.co.uk
© Brian Burke-Gaffney ECCL
ISBN LJK–D-LCIKJI–DF–H [Cloth] LJK–D–LCIKJI–EK–L [Paperback]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library
Set in Bembo DD on DE point by Mark Heslington, Scarborough, NorthYorkshire Printed and bound in England by Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham,Wilts 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page v
For my parents, John and Elizabeth 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page vi 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page vii
Contents
Plate section faces page 133
Preface ix List of plates xiii Map of Japan xvi
Chapter D Historical Background Chapter DK The Turbulent First Decade Chapter HJ Obstacles to Coexistence Chapter JI Life,Work and Recreation Chapter KK Mitsubishi Connections Chapter DDE Japanese Wives in Fiction and Real Life
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Contents
Chapter DFI Golden Years Chapter DKJ Downhill to the Second WorldWar Chapter EED And in the End Chapter EGE Gone but not Forgotten Appendix: British Consuls and Acting Consuls in Nagasaki, 1647–1731 236 Notes 240 Bibliography 251 Index 261
This work was supported in part by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (NO. 18520638) from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
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Preface
NAGASAKIISONE of Japan’s best-known cities. Its fame rests to a considerable extent on the atomic bombing of L August DLGH and the wealth of available information on the tragedy that unfolded in the city that dark day.Closer inspection of the library bookcase nevertheless reveals a number of excellent works on the ‘Christian Century’, when Nagasaki was a centre for the religion and a stomping ground for Portuguese, Spanish and Italian priests, traders and buccaneers.The same goes for the Edo Period, when the Dutch Factory on Dejima Island and the Chinese Quarter in the Ju zenji neighbourhood served as this country’s only windows on thē world and vice versa. However, the period in local history starting from the opening of Japan’s doors during the closing years of the Tokugawa regime and continuing until the flash of the atomic bomb – a period that may justifiably be called Nagasaki’s ‘British Century’ – has largely escaped the scrutiny of systematic research.This is particularly true with regard to the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, which came into being in DKHL as a hub on the invisible path linking the outposts of the British Empire and, although officially abolished four decades later,
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persisted as a social/architectural entity until being permanently shuttered by the hostilities of the Second WorldWar. One reason for the neglect is that many Japanese historians take exception to the ‘unequal treaties’, which were thrust upon Japan in the DKHCs and tend to overshadow more positive aspects of British-Japanese exchange during the Meiji Period as well as the role played by the foreign settlements in this country’s emergence as a world power. As a result the majority of writings on the history of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement focus on economic and architectural topics rather than the life and work of the foreigners who lived there and established businesses in the city.Another reason is thatYokohama and Kobe, the treaty ports serving the metropolitan areas of Tokyo and Osaka, expanded rapidly after the Meiji Restoration of DKIK and left Nagasaki in the shade in terms of foreign population, trade volume and attention from both within Japan and abroad. Still another factor may be Nagasaki’s traditional complacency in its role as a receptacle for everything the world has to offer and, by extension, its utter lack of urgency in analysing and advertising itself.This attribute is alluded to by the observation that Hiroshima and Nagasaki responded differently to the atomic bombings, the former with ikari (anger) and the latter with inori (prayer). Despite the lack of attention paid to Nagasaki’s ‘British Century’, the city is scattered with relics of the period and, in fact, owes much of its present prosperity to the activities of British residents and the ties they made with Japanese counterparts.The former homes of the Glover, Ringer,Alt and Walker families are significant landmarks of the modern-day tourism industry.The DHC-tonne hammerhead crane designed and built in Scotland and installed at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard exactly a century ago is still in operation today, along with innumerable reminders, tangible and intangible, of British- Japanese cooperation in shipbuilding, coal mining, railways, fisheries and other industries. The former British Consulate, Dejima Anglican Seminary, and Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank Nagasaki Branch Building remain as nationally designated heritage buildings and speak silently of an era when British residents brushed sleeves with their Japanese neighbours on Nagasaki streets. No one visiting Japan and hearing melodies like Auld Lang Syne, which as Hotaru no Hikari (‘By the Glow of the Fireflies’) is so deeply rooted in popular culture that few people
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even think of it as foreign, could deny the affinity between the two island nations flanking the Eurasian continent like bookends, a relationship that sprouted and blossomed in Nagasaki. The present work attempts to illuminate Nagasaki’s ‘British Century’, to relate stories of the people who inhabited the period, and to paint a portrait of an important chapter in the history of Japan’s interaction with the outside world.The list of colleagues and friends who contributed to this undertaking is long and old. I am indebted to Lane Earns,Alexander McKay, Naito Hatsuo, Sugiyama Shinya, Ian Nish, Sir Hugh Cortazzi and other̄ authors of ground-breaking works on related subjects. I also thank the many descendants of former British residents of Nagasaki who kindly shared information and historical materials, not to mention the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology for its generous grant. Special thanks go to Terry Bennett for opening the door and to Paul Norbury of Global Oriental for his unflagging patience and support. Nagasaki, hitherto little more than a remote fishing hamlet, took Portuguese Jesuit and surgeon Luis d’Almeida under its wing in DHIJ. Four and a half centuries and many foreign visitors and untold mountains and valleys later, it welcomed me in a similar manner. I hope that the present work will shed a ray of light on the history of this remarkable city and serve as a tribute to forebears forgotten in the march of time.
Brian Burke-Gaffney Nagasaki, Japan On the cusp of the rainy season, ECCL
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List of Plates
Plate section faces page 133
D. Portuguese ship and Jesuit headquarters. From an early folding screen E. DKHI lithograph showing Dejima Island in the Edo Period F. Dining-room scene of the Dejima Dutch factory G. Nagasaki woodblock depicting a Chinese merchant with Japanese consort H. DKHG lithograph from The Illustated London News showing four British warships anchored outside Nagasaki harbour I. View of Nagasaki Harbour from the British warships J. Admiral Stirling’s party visit the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office K. Page from Admiral Stirling’s ‘Convention’, DG October DKHG L. Seitetsusho (Iron Works) at Akunoura DC. Pierre Rossier’s panoramic photograph of Nagasaki DD. Map showing original topography of Oura district DE. Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser ¯ DF. William Alt, ca DKII DG. Alt family house DH. Main hall at former Daitokuji Temple
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List of Plates
DI. Oura Catholic Church DJ. Glover¯ house ca DKII DK. Thomas Blake Glover ca DKII DL. European community on Nezumijima (Rat Island) beach, DKIH EC. Oura bund and neighbourhood ca DKII ED. Map¯ showing area of Nagasaki Foreign Settlement EE. Kosuge Slip Dock EF. Maruyama entertainment quarter, ca DKIH EG. Oura creek from nearby hillside EH. O¯ ura creek looking from the waterfront towards the hills EI. Waterfront¯ street in Oura EJ. ‘Winning crew’ of May¯ DKII regatta EK. Boat house of the Nagasaki Racing and Athletic Committee EL. View from Higashiyamate hillside, with Dejima in the distance FC. Western-style buildings of Oura neighbourhood FD. Thomas Glover with IwasakiYanosuke¯ FE. Building berth at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki shipyard FF. Pierre Loti,Yves and Chrysanthème FG. Robert N.Walker and wife Sato, DKKK FH. Wilson and Charlotte Walker, DKKC FI. Wilson and Charlotte Walker with their children and nieces and nephew,DKLH FJ. House at No.DE Higashiyamate, home of the Correll family FK. Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen FL. Coaling of foreign passenger ship in Nagasaki harbour GC. Shops and stores on the Oura creek waterfront GD. Hana Glover,Walter Bennett¯ and wedding guests, DKLJ GE. Nagasaki Hotel GF. Robert N.Walker with his nine children after moving back to Japan GG. Robert N.Walker playing croquet with his children, c.DLCH GH. Nicholas Russel and sons GI. Frederick Ringer GJ. Robert N.Walker with children and grandchildren prior to leaving Nagasaki, DLCK GK. Wilson and Charlotte Walker with children and servants, DLCL GL. Thomas Glover, Kuraba Tomisaburo and Waka,ca DLCH HC. Buildings on Oura waterfront, early DLECs ¯ xiv 00 Prelims:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:30 Page xv
List of Plates
HD. BelleVue Hotel at No.DD Minamiyamate HE. Mansbridge family ca DKLI HF. Nagasaki-maru anchored at Dejima Wharf, ca DLFE HG. Chinese shops on the backstreet of Oura neighbourhood, ca DLEC ¯ HH. Asama-maru passenger liner launched from Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, DLEK HI. Foreign staff of Holme Ringer & Co., ca DLFH HJ. Kuraba Tomisaburo entertains guests at a party,DLFI HK. Sydney Ringer and sons Michael andVanya, early DLFCs HL. View of Oura neighbourhood and harbour in the early post- war period¯ IC. Kuraba Tomisaburo and Waka at No.L Minamiyamate in DLGC ID. Captain Joseph Goldsby with other American Occupation personnel in DLGJ IE. Page from DC August DLGK issue of Mainichi Shimbun IF. ‘Memorial Place of Madame Butterfly’ IG. Path between Oura Catholic Church and the old Walker residence ¯ IH. Cherry blossoms at Sakamoto International Cemetery II. British Consulate map, early DLCCs, showing neighbourhoods of foreign settlement
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1
Historical Background
RUMOURS OF A fabulously wealthy island kingdom lying somewhere east of China and teeming with gold and pepper and sweet-scented wood had darted around European society since the days of Marco Polo.With the development of square-rigged carracks capable of ocean travel, the Spanish sailed west and the Portuguese east, both bent on reaching ‘Zipangu’ and attaining riches and fulfilment on the other side of the globe. Only by chance however did the first Portuguese ship run aground at Tanegashima, a small island in present-day Kagoshima Prefecture, driven off course by a storm in the summer of DHGF. Merchants and missionaries followed in droves, introducing the contradictory cultures of Christian love and smooth-bore muskets and driving a spike into Japan’s pristine isolation. Over the following years the Portuguese built settlements in various ports on the western coast of Kyushu, but local wars, difficulties with Japanese inhabitants and repeated losses of property inflicted by the typhoons that rolled up from the south every autumn kept them constantly on the lookout for a secure base. In DHIJ, a dauntless missionary, surgeon and trade negotiator named Luis d’Almeida sailed into the bay of Nagasaki.The village
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he found here was similar to other fishing hamlets along the coast, but d’Almeida and the other Europeans could tell before even leaving the deck of their ship that they were bobbing on one of the best natural harbours in the world. Enclosed by hills on three sides, it bottlenecked at the entrance and enjoyed the protection of a cluster of well-defined islands on the approach.The most distinctive feature was a slender promontory – the nagasaki (‘long cape’) of the name – that protruded into the harbour like a finger pointing to the world’s oceans and predicting the role that the port would soon play in international affairs. Luis d’Almeida consulted with the feudal lord O¯ mura Sumitada and his local deputy Nagasaki Jinzaemon, both of whom would not only befriend the Portuguese Jesuits but also convert to Christianity and welcome the ships sailing from Macau loaded with sugar, Chinese silk, cotton fabrics and precious dyes. Officially opened in DHJC, the sleepy village turned into a boom town, with aspiring merchants and labourers streaming in from other parts of Japan and buildings shooting up like bamboo sprouts on the promontory and waterfront. In DHKC, the trade was so lucrative that O¯ mura, anxious to keep the Portuguese in Nagasaki, took the unprecedented step of transferring jurisdiction of the port and environs to the Society of Jesus, thus establishing the only historical example (aside from the American Occupation after the Second World War) of foreign control over Japanese territory. By the middle of the DHKCs the fishing village had grown into a bustling international port studded with Catholic churches, frequented by European traders and missionaries, visited without hindrance by Chinese and Korean opportunists, and populated almost exclusively by native Christians who ate meat and bread, drank wine from glass goblets, played chess and backgammon, and otherwise carried on in a manner unimaginable in other parts of Japan. Aside from churches, the Portuguese sponsored the construction of stone embankments and canals and the laying of flagstones on streets and lanes, using sandstone from local quarries and giving Nagasaki all the look of a Lisbon suburb.D An atmosphere of cooperation and freedom predominated in Nagasaki, but the religion professed by the Europeans began to draw criticism from Japanese leaders because its followers, whose numbers in Japan grew to a peak of some FCC,CCC by the turn of the century, tended to choose God over allegiance to their feudal lords. In DHKJ, stunned to learn about the extent of Christian
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influence in Kyushu, national ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi seized control over Nagasaki from the Jesuits and ordered all the Catholic priests and brothers to leave Japan within twenty days. The order proved to be more bark than bite, but a decade later Hideyoshi surprised the complacent Nagasaki community by ordering the execution of six European priests and eighteen Japanese followers, enraged this time by a shipwrecked Spanish seaman’s boast that armies would follow in the footsteps of the Catholic missionaries. It is noteworthy that the arrested priests were Franciscans who insisted on wearing their conspicuous religious garb, not Jesuits who had adopted an attitude of ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do’.The twenty-four individuals were rounded up in Kyoto and Osaka and taken in chains – along with two more Japanese followers who joined of their own accord – all the way to Nagasaki for death on the cross, a deliberate warning to the still mostly Christian population of this port that the foreign religion would no longer be tolerated.E Chinese ships also began visiting Nagasaki Harbour around this time, and Chinese traders established commercial links and took up lodgings in the town. Historical records indicate that a group of Chinese merchants led by Ou Yang-Hua and Zhang Ji- Quan received official permission to establish a meeting place in the Buddhist temple Goshinji in DICE, thereby gaining the first foothold for the Chinese community of Nagasaki.F The choice of this location on the opposite side of Nagasaki Harbour as a centre of activity reflects the Chinese desire to distance itself from the Portuguese and to dodge the growing Japanese animosity towards Christianity.After the Battle of Sekigahara in DICC, the Tokugawa Clan consolidated its power on the national level and went on to establish a bakufu government (shogunate), but it upheld the policy of maintaining the foreign trade while advancing the political and religious unity of the Japanese people. In the spring of DICC, the Dutch ship Liefde foundered on the east coast of Kyushu, an event that marked not only the beginning of Japanese-Dutch exchange but also the addition of a Protestant country to the international cocktail brewing in Japan. The Dutch won permission to trade from the newly inaugurated Tokugawa shogunate and established a factory (trading post) at Hirado in DICL.G This concession issued largely from the relationship of trust and friendship forged between the first shogun,Tokugawa Ieyasu, and William Adams, the English pilot
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on the Liefde who learned Japanese and assumed the Japanese name Miura Anjin.H Another reason was the desire of the shogunate to break the Portuguese monopoly on foreign trade and to dampen the impact of Catholicism. In DIDF, the British ship Clove commanded by John Saris sailed into Hirado Harbour, and the British established a factory for the English East India Company within sight of the one run by the Dutch.William Adams visited Hirado as a company employee and supervised commercial activities on behalf of both Britain and Japan, but only four British ships including the Clove ever touched Japanese shores.Adams died at Hirado in DIEC, and the British factory that he had helped to establish was dissolved three years later. The Tokugawa shogunate had accepted the stubborn presence of the Catholic priests and their Japanese congregations in Japan as an unavoidable condition for continuation of the profitable trade with the ships sailing from Macau. In DIDE, however, it imposed a complete and final ban on Christianity and ordered the destruction of all churches, the expulsion of priests, and the registration of every last Japanese citizen as a member of one of the principal Buddhist sects.The impact could not have been felt any greater than in Nagasaki: churches were razed, crucifixes were wrenched from Japanese hands, and anyone who insisted upon professing Christianity faced gruesome torture until he or she either recanted or died a martyr’s death. As a further step to contain the Portuguese, the shogunate ordered a group of Nagasaki merchants to build an artificial island in Nagasaki Harbour and to erect houses there for the Portuguese. By isolating the Europeans from the rest of the Nagasaki populace the authorities hoped to maintain commercial interaction while keeping the banned religion at bay.Workers erected stone embankments a few metres offshore and filled in the centre with gravel from the promontory where the Jesuit headquarters had once stood.About three acres in area, the fan- shaped landmass was called ‘Dejima’ (also ‘Deshima’ or ‘Decima’), literally meaning ‘protruding island’.Almost as soon as the project reached completion in DIFI, however, peasants living in the Shimabara area near Nagasaki revolted over heavy taxation, inciting a blood-drenched collision with government forces that convinced the Tokugawa shogunate to expel the Portuguese from Japan and to curtail all trade with the Catholic countries.I Subsequently, Nagasaki was placed under direct control of the
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shogunate, and local affairs were entrusted to one or two magistrates (bugyo) despatched from Edo who kept an eye on an assembly of elders̄ chosen from among prominent townsmen.To revive foreign trade, the shogunate granted special permission to the Dutch and Chinese to continue a modicum of strictly regulated trade in the port of Nagasaki on the condition that they eschew all activities related to Christianity. In DIGD, the Dutch East India Company, like a zebra mussel colonizing a deserted clam shell, moved its factory from Hirado to the island of Dejima abandoned two years earlier by the Portuguese. From that year onwards, Dutch ships sailed north from their mother port of Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia) and, whipped along by summer trade winds, entered the calm waters of Nagasaki Harbour via the Jojima Islands and Nomozaki Peninsula. Inspectors from the Magistrate’s Office came out in small boats to meet each ship and to conduct a preliminary check on the type and quantity of cargo and the number of crew members.A flotilla of boats then unloaded the cargo and conveyed it to the landing steps at Dejima where Nagasaki merchants were waiting to bid and barter.At the beginning, the principal imports and exports were silk and silver, respectively, but from the middle of the Edo Period, the merchandise changing hands came to include velvet, pepper, sugar, vegetable dyes, and glass, and, out of Japan, copper, camphor oil, lacquerware and prized Arita porcelain.The facilities on the island included houses for the Dutch employees, Indonesian servants, interpreters and courtesans, as well as warehouses for merchandise, a kitchen, billiard parlour, vegetable garden, cattle pen, and gatehouse. Drinking water was piped in from the outside using bamboo poles, and foodstuffs that the Dutch could not import or produce themselves were sold by local vendors.The visit of a ship meant great activity and lucrative profits for the tiny factory at Dejima, even after the early eighteenth century when the number of ships was limited to two or three a year.To the Dutch employees, however, assignment to Nagasaki was equivalent to a sentence of exile: daily life was so monotonous and the restrictions on their movements so severe that the island differed little from a prison. Swedish botanist and physician C.P.Thunberg, who served as company physician on Dejima from DJJH to DJJI, wrote: A European, who remains here, is in a manner dead and buried in an obscure corner of the globe. He hears no news of any kind;
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nothing relative to war, or other misfortunes and evils that plague and infest mankind; and neither the rumours of inland or foreign concerns delight or molest his ear.The soul possesses here one faculty only, which is the judgment (if, indeed, it be at all times in possession of this faculty).The European way of living is in other respects the same as in other parts of India, luxurious and irregular. Here, just as at Batavia, we pay a visit every evening to the Chief, after having walked several times up and down the two streets. These evening visits generally last from six o’clock to ten, and sometimes eleven or twelve at night, and constitute a very disagreeable way of life, fit only for such as have no other way of spending their time than droning over a pipe of tobacco.J
Thunberg’s criticism of the lethargic lifestyle on Dejima suggests that he did not spend much time ‘droning’ over tobacco pipes and gin glasses during his stay. Indeed,Thunberg and other Dejima physicians such as Engelbert Kaempfer and Philipp F.von Siebold struggled for a view beyond the earthen walls and later published books in Europe that forged a base for modern studies on Japan. Conversely, the information that they brought from abroad provided Japan with a precious peephole into the latest findings of Western science and medical techniques. In addition, upon arrival in Nagasaki, the Dejima physicians and chief factors were interviewed by the Nagasaki interpreters about global events and the information they supplied was compiled in an official statement called fusetsugaki (‘Report on Current Hearsay’) that kept the reclusive Tokugawā shogunate up to date on the outside world. The Dutch sojourn on Dejima has received great attention from historians, but in fact it was the Chinese who usurped the role of commercial and cultural leader in the port after the departure of the Portuguese.The peiron or ‘dragon boat’ races, Ming-style temple architecture, the custom of eating at a round table, Chinese words, and other imports from the continent took deeper root in the local culture of Nagasaki than any Dutch artifact.At the peak of the Chinese trade in DIKK a remarkable DLG Chinese junks lowered their sails in Nagasaki Harbour in one year, as opposed to only three Dutch ships the same year.The activities of the Chinese in fact became so conspicuous that the Tokugawa shogunate decided to impose restrictions on trade and to confine Chinese merchants and sailors, free in the past to live anywhere they wanted, in a walled off compound similar to
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Dejima. Completed in DIKL, the tojinyashiki (Chinese Quarter) sprawled over an area of about seven̄ acres in the suburban neighbourhood of Ju zenji and included stores, offices, Chinese shrines, and rows of two-storeȳ barracks (nagaya).The residential facilities provided accommodations for some E,CCC Chinese residents, about DCC times more than the number of Dutchmen living full-time on Dejima.K Despite the rigid separation, relations among the Japanese, Chinese and Dutch were generally cordial: in contrast to other parts of Japan, where the only foreigners encountered by ordinary people were those portrayed in exaggerated images in woodblock prints, the people of Nagasaki used the affectionate terms Achasan and Orandasan to refer to their foreign co-inhabitants and associated with them in spite of the various restrictions. Once all the rules had been settled, Nagasaki entered a period of peace and prosperity as Japan’s only open port, with the Chinese living in their spacious quarter in the Ju zenji district, the Dutch ensconced on Dejima, the Japanese communitȳ scattered over seventy-seven traditional blocks or machi, and everyone profiting directly or indirectly from the foreign trade. In DKCK, however, the town was aroused from its feudal daydreams by the uninvited visit of the British warship Phaeton, which entered Nagasaki Harbour flying a Dutch flag and brought a sobering message to Japan about changes in the balance of world power.As was the custom, representatives from the Dejima factory rowed out to welcome the visiting ship, but as they approached they were taken hostage by the British, who then demanded water, food and fuel in exchange for the release of the Dutchmen.The feudal clans of neighbouring districts had been despatching guards to Nagasaki on a rotating basis, but these were rendered indolent and ineffectual by decades of narcotic peace, and the small force stationed here at the time was unable to repel the Phaeton. Since it would take days or even weeks to mobilize troops from other parts of Kyushu, Nagasaki Magistrate Matsudaira Zushonokami Yasuhira had little choice but to acquiesce to all the British demands and to pray that the crew stayed on their ship and refrained from acts of violence and looting.L The Phaeton left Nagasaki Harbour two days later without mishap, but Matsudaira took personal responsibility for the debacle by committing ritual suicide, and the Tokugawa
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shogunate reeled in shock from the sudden realization of its own vulnerability to hostile foreign advances. The incident also sounded a warning bell about the rise of British influence in East Asia.The shogunate responded by reinforcing coastal defenses and ordering the Nagasaki interpreters to study English, the latter a palliative measure that led to the compilation of the first Japanese-English dictionaries but did nothing to change this country’s ostrich-like approach to international affairs. In the autumn of DKCL, a year after the visit of the Phaeton, Dejima factory employee Jan Blomhoff began lessons in the English language for Japanese students, mostly the interpreters who had studied only Dutch to date.The first product of this undertaking was a collection of useful English expressions called Angeria gengo wage completed in DKDD by the interpreterYoshio Gonnosuke.This was followed by a three-volume work compiled by Motoki Sho zaemon, entitledAngeria kogaku shosen, and by an even more elaboratē dictionary and phrase book entitled Angeria gorin taisei, which reached completion under Blomhoff’s supervision.DC The incentive for these efforts may have come in part from news that the Netherlands had been annexed by France during the Napoleonic Wars and that the British had conquered Java in DKDD and taken over the Dutch headquarters at Batavia, leaving the little island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbour as the only place in the world still flying the Dutch flag.The ink was barely dry on the new dictionaries when, in the summer of DKDF and DKDG, British ships again sailed into Nagasaki Harbour to contest the Dutch monopoly, this time despatched by Thomas S. Raffles, the new governor-general of Java.Aboard one of the ships was Willem Wardenaar, a former Dejima chief factor who had been enlisted by Raffles to persuade his fellow Dutchmen to accept defeat and relinquish their trading rights to the British. Hendrik Doeff, the chief factor at the time, skilfully defused the British takeover attempt by warning that Japanese forces would react swiftly and violently to any such action. Wardenaar and his colleagues backed off and sailed out of Nagasaki without showing their true colours.As the following account published in the British press indicates, however, they may have done so in exchange for the promise of a well-stocked voyage back to Java: By accounts from Batavia, brought home in the Company’s packet Isabella, recently arrived, we learn that the attempt to re-open the
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trade between that settlement and Japan had been successful, and the returns most profitable.Two vessels, the Charlotte and the Mary, had been sent to try the experiment. On the arrival back in December, the cargo of the Charlotte was estimated at ICC,CCC dollars, consisting of copper, camphor, and lacquered goods.The Charlotte was taken up for a similar voyage, and would probably sail in June. The trade is carried on under very disagreeable circumstances, and restrictions to which Englishmen cannot easily submit. It must appear that the ships and property are Dutch, and all the business is done through the medium of the Dutch Resident. On the Charlotte coming to anchor, there was an order from this Resident to hoist Dutch colours, which was accordingly done forthwith.The ships were then disarmed, and the Captains sent on shore, on a small island called Nangasacky [sic], where the Dutch factory stands.This factory is walled quite round, with no other means of ingress and egress than by two gates, at each of which there is a strong Japanese guard … The trade is of so much importance, that it is to be hoped the British may ultimately succeed in forming an establishment of their own at Nangasacky, although attended with such circumstances of personal unpleasantness to those concerned.DD The British returned control of Batavia to the Dutch in DKDH and the visits of British ships to Nagasaki ended, but it was like the calm between the periphery and centre of a typhoon because the English East India Company only stepped up its efforts to promote trade with China. Since the early eighteenth century,the Qing government had stubbornly confined trade to the southern port of Canton (Guangzhou) and imposed a number of ‘unpleasant’ restrictions not unlike those endured by the Dutch in Nagasaki.This limitation was aggravated by acts passed by the British parliament to protect textile manufacturers from the competition caused by the import of silk. Since tea was the only item in the Chinese trade that could be sold legally and profitably in Britain, the early nineteenth century saw a dramatic increase in the import of tea and the development of the famous ‘clipper ships’ that carried the leafy cargo back to London. On the negative side, however, it resulted in a huge trade deficit because the Chinese accepted only gold and silver as payment and continued to shun British products like woollens. Representations by the British government proved futile, but a solution to the problem was found in the form of opium, imported in large quantities from British India and exploited to break down
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Chinese resistance to imports. Soon the trade imbalance had swung around in Britain’s favour. In DKFL, horrified by the drain on the national economy and the deleterious effect on the health of its citizens, the Qing government tried to halt the opium trade and, when this failed, took the drastic step of destroying thousands of chests of the drug on the waterfront in Canton.The British responded with a display of overwhelming military force. When the smoke cleared in the summer of DKGE, the Chinese Emperor was compelled to sign the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing), to cede Hong Kong to Britain, to pay a crushing indemnity, and to allow the British to establish settlements and engage freely in trade in five other ports including Shanghai, only a day and a night by ship from Nagasaki.These events, which cleaved open the Chinese heartland and established precedents that would soon be followed by other foreign powers, had profound implications for Japan, China’s reclusive neighbour to the east.DE By this time American ships were also challenging Japan’s refusal to engage in international exchange, including an unsuccessful attempt in DKGI by James Biddle to open the country for trade and the DKGK visit of the sloop-of-war USS Preble commanded by Captain James Glynn, who forced his ship through a row of boats blocking the entrance to Nagasaki Harbour and picked up a group of imprisoned American sailors whose whaling vessel had foundered on the coast of Hokkaido two years earlier. In his report to the American government, Glynn recommended the use of ever more adamant gunboat diplomacy if Japan continued to resist foreign propositions.DF One of the Americans who boarded the USS Preble at Nagasaki was Ranald Macdonald, the son of a Hudson’s Bay Company factor and a Chinook woman who, although educated and literate, took a job on a whaler in the Pacific and deliberately went ashore in northern Japan in the hope of finding the roots of his maternal ancestors. Like his fellow American detainees, Macdonald had been captured and sent to Nagasaki to await repatriation, but his erudition impressed his captors so much that they asked him to teach English to Japanese students and to help compile a dictionary. Among his students was Moriyama Einosuke, who would go on to serve as interpreter in negotiations with Commodore Matthew Perry in DKHF. After returning to North America, Macdonald joined a group of prospectors in DKID and helped to discover gold at Antler Creek
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near Barkerville, British Columbia, an event that sparked the Cariboo Gold Rush.He spent the rest of his life on a farm in eastern Washington State, where he died in DKLG. He produced a concise autobiography before his death, but his attempts to have it published were unsuccessful because, it is said, the publishers he approached rejected his story as too outlandish to be true.DG Through their spokesmen in Nagasaki, the Dutch continued to warn the Tokugawa shogunate about the crisis on the horizon, but it was not until July DKHF, when Commodore Matthew Perry anchored a squadron of American warships in Tokyo Bay and pointed cannons at the streets of Edo (Tokyo) that Japan finally arose from its long hibernation. The overt purpose of this incursion was to protest the ill-treatment of the shipwrecked whaling crews, but in reality the Americans were eager to promote trade with China and other countries of East Asia and considered Japan to be a vital stepping-stone. Perry delivered a letter from President Millard Fillmore calling for the opening of the country and then steamed away with a warning that he would return the following year for an answer.A few weeks later, Russian Admiral Evfimii Putiatin sailed into Nagasaki Harbour, heeding the advice of former Dejima physician Philipp F.von Siebold to submit his request for a Russo-Japanese treaty through the one port in Japan where foreigners were allowed to tread. The good manners of the Russians were awarded, however, with an excruciatingly long wait for a reply from the Tokugawa shogunate.DH While the Russians languished in Nagasaki, Matthew Perry returned to Japan in February DKHG and, after a month of negotiations, wrestled the Tokugawa shogunate into signing the Treaty of Kanagawa and agreeing to a number of concessions including the opening of the ports of Shimoda (near Edo) and Hakodate (Hokkaido) for the supply of provisions and coal to American ships.This treaty set a precedent for the other early agreements reached between the Tokugawa shogunate and the Western powers. Faced with Japan’s impending entry into the parlour of international relations, the Tokugawa shogunate turned rather hastily to its old friend The Netherlands for assistance in purchasing warships, firearms and books on military subjects, even though there was still no trained navy to implement them. In August DKHG, a wooden paddle steamer of the Dutch navy called the Soembing arrived in Nagasaki Harbour and anchored there for
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three months, during which time the commander, Gerardus Fabius, conducted rudimentary instruction on naval theory and techniques for Japanese students.The Dutch cooperated with the Japanese requests in order to maintain their ‘most favoured nation’ status and to win terms similar to those granted to the United States.DI The Tokugawa shogunate and Dutch government (represented by Janus H. Donker Curtius, the last Dejima factor) agreed that the Soembing would be presented to Japan, that the naval instruction under Dutch teachers would be continued, and that two new warships would be built for Japan in The Netherlands.The Soembing returned to Nagasaki in June DKHH carrying a detachment of twenty-two Dutch naval instructors under the command of G.C.C. Pels Rijcken.The steamer was handed over to Japanese authorities amid great ceremony on H October the same year and renamed Kanko-maru. Rijcken took up the position of director of the first naval̄ training institute at the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office.TheTokugawa shogunate official Nagai Namba was appointed principal, and about DKC bright young students were selected from both the shogunate and the feudal domains.DJ Among the shogunate students was Katsu Rintaro (Kaishu ), who would later serve as first minister of the Imperial̄ Japanesē Navy.A second Dutch naval detachment led by Captain H.Van Kattendyke arrived in Nagasaki in DKHJ and handed over the state-of-the-art screw-driven steamship ordered earlier by the shogunate. Renamed Kanrin-maru and commanded by Katsu Rintaro , this ship would carry a mostly Japanese crew on its daring voyagē to the United States in DKIC.The second naval detachment comprised of thirty-six Dutch instructors helped Japan begin the process of industrialization and modernization, not only in naval science but also in Western medicine, surgery and pharmacology and a wide range of other fields such as printing, mining, factory production, biscuit baking, photography,language and navigation. The Dutch wanted to maintain the commercial ascendancy that they had enjoyed for more than two centuries, particularly at a time when American and Russian naval forces were walking right past them to conclude treaties with the Tokugawa shogunate. Their consternation was further aroused on J September DKHG when British Admiral James Stirling arrived in Nagasaki Harbour with a squadron of four warships and entrusted an official request for the conclusion of a British-Japanese agreement with the
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Nagasaki Magistrate.Although hampered by the language barrier and required to endure several weeks of stagnation while waiting for a reply from the Tokugawa shogunate, Stirling and his counter- part, Mizuno Chikugonokami, signed the Japan-Britain Treaty of Amity at the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office on DG October DKHG and laid the first foundation stone for a new era of Japanese- British cooperation. Preserved today at the National Archives, Kew, the original document reflects the difficulties of communication encountered in concluding the treaty, not only by the criss-crossing translations in English, Japanese and Dutch and the attachment of last-minute revisions due to conflicting interpretations, but also by the gluing of the Japanese document upside-down in the treaty folder.DK A detailed account of Stirling’s visit, including a number of illustrations showing Nagasaki as it emerged from the veil of national isolation, was published a few months later in The Illustrated London News. The article contains the following comment on the treaty and its significance for the future of international relations: The treaty now made with Japan contains nothing about commerce, yet it opens the way, and prepares for future negotiation on this important point. It has been affected without violence or menace. It has occasioned no expense or inconvenience, but the contrary.The four ships found, in the fine harbour of Nagasaki, a safe and salubrious anchorage at a bad season of the year.They were well supplied with fresh provisions and water, the health of the crews improved, nor was there a single death during the six weeks of their stay.The Japanese officers observed and fully appreciated the perfect order, cleanliness and discipline prevailing on board the ships and often expressed their admiration of these qualities, as well as of the superior scientific and mechanical arrangements. They were pleased with the deference paid to their laws, the respect shown for their rights. They are a remarkably sensitive, quick race of men; they perceive, almost intuitively, the least slight or rudeness.Whatever they grant freely and with really goodwill they observe and set up to most thoroughly.On the other hand, whatever is extorted from them by menace will not produce lasting or satisfactory results. It is highly probable that what has been quietly done by Admiral James Stirling at Nagasaki may exceed in durability and value the work done at Yeddo by the Americans, although that cost a special mission and was heralded to the world with a very loud flourish of trumpets indeed.There is another point of view in which the
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treaty now made seems important.The Japanese have been made to feel and to understand that while they possess a prominent and insular position, events may and must take place which will render their exclusiveness impossible.DL The visit of Admiral Stirling to Nagasaki in DKHG marked the first official exchange between Japan and Britain since the closure of the English Factory in Hirado in DIEF.As the author of the article points out, it was characterized by civil conduct on both sides, albeit with a sense of resignation and acceptance of the inevitable on the part of the Japanese. Like the American and Russian pacts, the thrust of the first treaty concluded between Britain and Japan was purely diplomatic, the latter agreeing to allow British ships into a few designated ports and to provide fuel, water, food and other necessities while remaining uncommitted as to commercial and residential rights. It was clear to everyone, however, that Japan had emerged irrevocably from its shell of feudal isolation.The article in The Illustrated London News ends with a description of the presents exchanged by the Nagasaki Magistrate and Admiral Stirling.While the magistrate offered Arita porcelain, lacquerware boxes and a pair of small dogs, Admiral Stirling gave his counterpart two pistols, a gift that portended, rather ominously, the new age of international exchange upon which Japan was bravely embarking. Two facilities established in Nagasaki with Dutch assistance during the interim between the early treaties and the official opening of Japan’s doors in DKHL had great significance for the future of Japan. One was the Igaku Denshu sho (Medical Training Institute) opened in the Nagasaki Magistrate’s̄ Office in November DKHJ by J.L.C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, one of the members of the second naval detachment. A graduate of the College of Army Surgeons in Utrecht, the twenty-eight year-old Pompe van Meerdervoort launched Japan’s first systematic lectures in Western medicine, surgery and pharmacology and in DKIC played an instrumental role in the foundation of theYo jo sho (Government Hospital) in the Koshima neighbourhood̄ of̄ Nagasaki, Japan’s first modern hospital and medical school.EC While living in the Western-style precincts of Dejima, Pompe van Meerdervoort and his successors – including A.F.Bauduin, C.G. van Mansvelt and C.H.M. Foch – watched over the introduction of Western medical practices, overcame Japanese resistance to autopsies, syphyllis examinations and smallpox vaccinations,
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emphasized the importance of sanitation and public health, and educated Japanese pioneers in the field of Western medicine and science. The other facility of note created before the official opening of Japan’s doors was the Nagasaki Seitetsusho (Iron Works) founded at Akunoura under the supervision of Dutch engineer Hendrik Hardes.The construction of factory buildings began in DKHJ and reached completion three years later, after which time the facility conducted repairs to steamships and produced an array of new- age implements such as building parts, boilers and cannons.The main factory building was erected in European-style using the first red bricks baked in Japan.The Nagasaki Iron Works was the forerunner of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard established on the same site a quarter of a century later.ED The same year that it sanctioned the establishment of Japan’s first modern medical school and iron works, the Tokugawa shogunate asked the O¯ mura Clan to give up its rights to O¯ ura Tomachi, a village bordering the town of Nagasaki to the south that had been earmarked by the shogunate as a possible site for a foreign settlement.The clan acquiesced in exchange for the rights to Koga, an inland village east of Nagasaki famous for its tree nurseries and the production of dolls. O¯ ura Tomachi was thus absorbed into the shogunate-governed tenryo (‘territory ruled from on high’) of Nagasaki, and the Nagasaki Foreign̄ Settlement became something more than a concept in the minds of Japanese and foreign negotiators.EE In the summer of DKHK, no longer able to maintain its ambivalent policy regarding international trade and the residence of foreigners in Japan, the Tokugawa shogunate signed a set of fully-fledged treaties with the United States, Britain, The Netherlands, Russia and France. Known today as the Ansei Treaties (DKHK was the fifth year of the Ansei Period according to the Japanese system), these historic agreements were based to a large extent on the British experience in China and the precedents set by the Treaty of Nanking. They were also inherently ‘unequal’, that is, they gave advantages to one cosignatory that were not enjoyed by the other. However, the Ansei Treaties resembled the Treaty of Nanking much more closely than the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin), which was concluded by Britain and China after the Second Opium War (Arrow War) the same year and forced a number of invasive and humiliating conditions on the Qing
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government, including the free passage of foreign missionaries and merchants throughout China, the opening of the Yangtze River and the tea- and silk-producing central provinces to trade, and the establishment of several more treaty ports.EF James Bruce, Kth Earl of Elgin (DKDD–IF), the former governor- general of Canada who had been appointed high commissioner to China, travelled to China in DKHK and oversaw the Treaty of Tientsin before proceeding to Edo to sign the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce with representatives of the Tokugawa shogunate.After that he returned to China to deal with the violent backlash ensuing in that country, going on to order the destruction of the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing as retaliation for the imprisonment and torture of several British diplomatic envoys, one of whom was Harry Parkes, the future British Minister to Japan. The stipulations laid out in the Ansei Treaties included the residence of diplomatic agents in Edo, fixed import-export duties subject to international (not Japanese) control, recognition of foreign silver coin on a weight-for-weight basis with its Japanese counterpart, and the opening of several ports including Nagasaki for foreign trade and habitation, effective D July DKHL. On the pretext that Japan was incapable of governing foreigners or handling international legal affairs – or that it might even subject foreigners to barbarous customs such as sarashikubi (the public display of a decapitated head after an execution) – the treaties guaranteed extraterritoriality for the subjects of the foreign powers.This meant that a foreigner who committed a crime against a Japanese citizen would be tried in the consulate of the said country, not in a Japanese court. It also meant that foreigners could rent property in designated foreign settlements separate from the Japanese community, erect buildings of their choice, make their own social and commercial rules, and otherwise enjoy a Western-style lifestyle without any interference from their Japanese hosts and neighbours. Still another guarantee was freedom of religion, a concession that flew straight in the face of the ban on Christianity enforced by the Tokugawa shogunate since the seventeenth century.EG One minor but noteworthy stipulation embedded in the Ansei Treaties was a ban on the import of opium, the noxious substance that had brought so much misery to the people of China and altered, so dramatically and irrevocably, the course of history in
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East Asia.The Treaty of Tienstin signed the same year by Britain and China contained no such restriction, probably because the British wanted to keep the option open in advancing their goals on the continent. However disadvantaged in DKHK, Japan was determined to avoid the destructive effects of imperialism and to establish a relationship of equality and cooperation with its Western counterparts.
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The Turbulent First Decade
ON OS JUNE OVSW, two weeks prior to the official opening of Japanese ports on O July, HMS Sampson sailed into Nagasaki Harbour carrying the first British diplomatic representatives to Japan. Nagasaki had been Japan’s only open port for more than two centuries, but the scenes that greeted the foreigners’ eyes gave little indication of the town’s strategic or historic importance. There was no stately castle or imposing fortifications, only narrow streets lined with paper-windowed wooden houses receding to the steps of a few humble-looking temples and shrines poised along the feet of the surrounding mountains. Graveyards stretched up the steep hillsides behind the temples in full view of the town, as if to remind the populace of the impermanence of life. All the colours were natural: the varying shades of unpainted wood, the dull grey of ceramic roof tiles and stone embankments, the whitewashed walls of earthen kura warehouses, and the myriad hues of sub-tropical vegetation heavy with the moisture of the rainy season. The island of Dejima, connected to the town by a short bridge, was still the site of the famous Dutch Factory, but the only reminder of the Dutch presence there was a flag flying from a pole in the background and a few painted buildings hovering over
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the embankment walls. Nearby was another bridged island with a cluster of warehouses used to store merchandise from the Chinese trade, and the old Chinese Quarter sprawling up the hillside in the distance. Among the passengers on HMS Sampson was Consul-General Rutherford Alcock, the former China consul and chief planner of the British settlement in Shanghai who would proceed to Edo to establish a British legation there and begin negotiations with representatives of the Tokugawa shogunate. Also on board was C. Pemberton Hodgson, the consul-designate for Hakodate, accompanied by his wife.While still in Nagasaki Harbour,Alcock penned a letter from his cabin to George Morrison, the consul- designate for Nagasaki who had been delayed and unable to join the representation. In the letter Alcock records his surprise at finding Britons already settled in Nagasaki and reports the founding of the first British consulate in Japan: As your arrival here may be indefinitely deferred and can hardly be anticipated before the end of next month, I have deemed it expedient to place Mr Hodgson in charge of the consulate at Nagasaki. Since I find a British trade and mercantile community already established, and with every chance of extension after the Ost July, I have only to add therefore to the instructions already conveyed to you … that you should lose no time in gaining your post … I have obtained a temporary location for the consular establishment in a temple pleasantly situated on the edge of the bay and sanctioned the necessary expense of making it habitable. You will find residence there, but no furniture beyond a few chairs and tables for the office.O Deposited on the Nagasaki waterfront with his wife and a pile of luggage, C. Pemberton Hodgson moved into the Buddhist temple acquired by Alcock in O¯ ura Tomachi,the village adjacent to the town of Nagasaki and tentative site for the new foreign settlement. The name of the temple, Myo#gyo#ji (‘temple of mysterious workings’), provided a good indication of the diplomatic skills that Hodgson would need to win the help of the Nagasaki authorities in proceeding with plans for the foreign settlement, establishing rules for commercial activity, and sur- mounting the linguistic and cultural differences that persistently hindered communication. In fact, the acting consul ran straight into a wall of feudal reticence, his every attempt to advance negotiations thwarted by the Nagasaki officials’ stock answer that
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they could not make any decision without approval from the shogunate. On P July,the day after the official opening of the port, Hodgson wrote a letter to Rutherford Alcock, now in Edo, reporting that general agreement had been reached about the site of the proposed foreign settlement but that the Japanese officials were vacillating as to the arrangements for buildings. He also complains about the reluctance of Japanese merchants to accept the silver dollars offered by the British and suggests that if Alcock ‘could send stringent orders that public orders should be posted, without fear or intimidation on the part of the authorities, the populace will soon fall into the habit of esteeming the dollar’.P The exchange rate had been set by the Ansei Treaties of OVSV on the principle of same weight and same quality, ONN Mexican silver dollars (yo#gin) being deemed equivalent to about QNN Japanese ichibugin.The Mexican dollar had been chosen because of its relative purity and widespread use as a currency in China, but the exchange system was beset with troubles as a result of resistance among the merchant class of Nagasaki, chronic shortages of the Japanese coin, and the surreptitious introduction of a variety of other foreign silver dollars such as Spanish Carolus III, Bolivian, Peruvian and French as well as chipped or ‘broken’ dollars from Hong Kong. In fact, only when Japan finally established its own modern currency in the early Meiji period would these difficulties finally abate. With regard to the foreign settlement, Hodgson informs his superior that he walked out to the proposed site with John G. Walsh, the American Consul, and Janus H. Donker Curtius, the chief factor at the Dutch Factory on Dejima.Walsh, the leading American merchant at the time, had met Consul-General Townsend Harris when the latter called at Nagasaki during a visit in May, and he had been appointed on the spot to represent American interests here. He would stay in Nagasaki for several years and marry a Japanese woman namedYamaguchi Rin before moving to Kobe, where he died in OVWU.Q Donker Curtius came to Nagasaki in OVSP to serve as chief factor at Dejima but, as mentioned earlier, played the unexpected role of collaborator in the opening of Japan’s doors to the world and representative of the Netherlands in the signing of the first Dutch-Japanese treaty in OVST. Despite the frustrations caused by linguistic and cultural barriers, Hodgson seems to have respected the Nagasaki
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Magistrate Okabe Suruganokami and to have taken an optimistic approach to the future of Nagasaki and its potential for trade. ‘The exports from Nagasaki are considerable, and will probably before long be enormous,’ he wrote to Alcock,‘for many of the articles are quite essential to our Chinese neighbours, and others are greedily desired in Europe.’R After describing the lacquerware and porcelain exported from Japan by the Dutch and Chinese, he goes on to provide a list of other local products that could be exploited by British entrepreneurs: Rich and common silks, tea, camphor, isinglass, soy, vegetable-oil, Japan wax, copper, &c. find their way to the European marts direct. Coral, dried fish, sea-weed, bees-wax, Awaba and Erico [bêche de mer and sea-slugs], mushrooms, ginseng, gall-nuts and vermicelli are some of the articles which go to China, and they generally produce very profitable returns.The rice of Japan is perhaps the most nutritious in the world, and, though forbidden to be exported (as is also wheat) under the seventh regulation annexed to our Treaty, yet a considerable quantity of both has been bought, when the Treasury thought it convenient or feasible to sell.The coal-beds of Japan are yet in their infancy and unexplored, but they are supposed to be rich and extensive; and when the shortsighted jealousy of the Japanese government shall wear away, when they will allow British enterprise and pluck to be free to go beyond the ten ‘ri’ [ten ri is equivalent to about forty kilometres] stipulated upon by treaty,or when some more enlightened Daimio may take it into his head (a case not improbable) to conclude a distinct and separate convention with one of the powerful nations of the West, then this necessary principle of locomotion will be developed, exhumed, and perhaps sold at the pit’s mouth for the same price it is now bought in the black fields of England.S Hodgson’s comment about coal was prophetic, because Nabeshima Naohiro, daimyo# (feudal lord) of the Hizen (Saga) domain which included the rich coal beds of Takashima Island among its possessions, would soon sign a contract with Scottish entrepreneur Thomas Blake Glover and turn the black rock into one of Nagasaki’s most important export items and the fuel for the industrialization of Japan. The first British consul also left a description of the sensation caused by the appearance of his wife in a town where no Caucasian woman had set foot since the brief and controversial visit ofTitia, the wife of Dutch Factor Jan Blomhoff, to Dejima in OVOU. Hodgson reports that a Japanese artist followed his wife
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about on the first day of arrival and produced an illustration that was later converted into a woodblock print and mass-produced as a saké bottle label but looked ‘as much like the original as a butterfly to a salamander’.T George Morrison arrived in Nagasaki in August and took over from Hodgson, continuing the latter’s negotiations with Japanese authorities.The most important item on the agenda of course was the proposed foreign settlement. Morrison and his fellow foreign consuls reached final agreement with Japanese representatives to establish the settlement in O¯ ura Tomachi, a pristine strip of coastal property south of the town of Nagasaki encompassing a village formally belonging to the O¯ mura Clan, a creek pouring into a shallow inlet and the adjacent hillsides. Mud flats fanned out from the creek and teemed with shellfish, mudskippers and fiddler crabs, while the hillsides were cut into terraces for the cultivation of fruits and vegetables that had been finding their way to Nagasaki dinner tables since the Edo Period.The village consisted of a few wood and clay huts with old-fashioned thatched roofs, clustering together with their backs to the harbour. The villagers would soon disappear, but Myo#gyo#ji Temple, still the temporary British Consulate, would remain in the centre of the proposed site with the neighbourhoods of the foreign settlement surrounding it like a shell grasping a pearl. The negotiators agreed that the shogunate would reclaim land from the harbour to create flat property for commercial districts, reinforce the creek with stone embankments, and install all the necessary roads, bridges, gutters and foundation walls. Meanwhile the ‘Land Regulations for the Port of Nagasaki in Japan’ prepared by the foreign consuls and promulgated in September OVTN laid out the rules for foreign residents, enjoining them, among other things, to apply to their respective consulates to rent property, to erect buildings within six months, to refrain from opening a public house and selling spirits or liquors without a licence, and to pay a yearly land rent to the Japanese government at the end of each year.U The land leases granted by the government would be con- sidered ‘perpetual’, that is, the renter would hold a title deed and enjoy full rights of ownership to buildings but would not actually possess the land upon which the buildings stood. Sometimes referred to by the term ‘WWW-year lease’, this unique arrangement would remain in place until being unilaterally rescinded by the Japanese government during the Second World War.
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The interval between the official opening of Nagasaki as a treaty port and the completion of the foreign settlement groundwork witnessed a brief but hectic meeting of cultures reminiscent of the days in the sixteenth century when Portuguese traders mingled with Japanese merchants and Chinese, Korean and Spanish buccaneers on the back streets of Nagasaki.The foreigners landing here were in effect free to take up lodgings wherever they could rent a house or room.The neighbourhood of choice was Hirobaba, two blocks of wooden houses facing each other across the stone-paved path leading up to the entrance to the Chinese Quarter.A Japanese-Chinese interface since the late seventeenth century, this little enclave turned into a kind of makeshift international bazaar after the opening of the port, with European adventurers, Chinese residents and the young represent- atives of various feudal clans of southwestern Japan rubbing shoulders and establishing the first tentative commercial links. One of the visitors to the unruly netherworld of Hirobaba was a stocky twenty-six year-old samurai from the Tosa Domain (present-day Ko#chi Prefecture) named IwasakiYataro#, who had been despatched by clan elders to investigate possibilities for trade in the newly opened port. At Hirobaba, Iwasaki encountered Chinese and Europeans for the first time, inhaled the exotic odour of foreign cargo being conveyed onto carts, and beheld the unearthly apparition of clippers and warships anchored in the harbour. A student of Chinese literature, he lost no time in knocking at the door of prominent Chinese merchants, and his ability to engage in hitsudan (communicating by writing Chinese characters on paper), not to mention his capacity for the strong alcoholic drinks served by his Chinese hosts, helped him to strike up friendships and gather information. On one excursion into the Nagasaki entertainment quarter, he ran into John B. Major, an aspiring British businessman about his same age who had been in Nagasaki since June OVSW and had already established one of Japan’s earliest foreign trading houses here.V Iwasaki accepted Major’s invitation to visit his house and enjoyed the opportunity to observe Western customs, to sit in chairs, and to share a repast that included cheese, ham and other foods that he had never tasted before.After lunch, Major took his guest out to the harbour for a visit to one of the British steamships anchored there, and during the tour he told him about how steamships had revolutionized international shipping and
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had brought tremendous wealth and power to British firms like Jardine Matheson & Co. Iwasaki was astounded by the size of the steamship and by its sophisticated appliances and fittings. He states in his diary that he gazed in wonder at the gleaming woodwork, the carpets in each room, the kerosene lamps on each table and desk, and the engines and boilers in the belly of the ship. Major could never have imagined the effect, but this visit by Iwasaki Yataro# to the steamship and the sight of the otherWestern ships in Nagasaki Harbour may very well have been the seed that grew later into one of the greatest industrial empires in the world, namely the Mitsubishi company. In any case, Major and Iwasaki seemed to have hit it off. Iwasaki reports that he returned to Major’s house from the harbour and joined him in drinking ‘cold European liquor from a large cup like a cow’.W The first phase of construction of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement – the filling in of the O¯ ura waterfront and creation of the northern bank of O¯ ura Creek – reached completion in January OVTN. Some TN,NNN square metres (fifteen acres) in area, the district was divided into thirty-one lots, with lots one to eleven on the harbour and the others facing the creek and back streets.The second phase involved the filling in of the southern side of O¯ ura Creek and the extension of the rocky promontory below Myo#gyo#ji Temple, called Sagarimatsu (‘drooping pines’) after the grove of trees there, and the construction of an embankment on the waterfront at Umegasaki, near Hirobaba.A wealthy Nagasaki merchant named Kozone Rokuzaemon, who had been engaging in personal negotiations with European counterparts, paid for a further extension of the Sagarimatsu coastal district to the south.ON In October OVTN, the celebrated Scottish botanist and world traveller Robert Fortune visited Nagasaki and later penned his first impressions, describing the harbour as ‘one of the most beautiful in the world’: It is about a mile in width, and three or four in length.When you are inside it appears to be completely land-locked, and has all the appearance of an inland lake.The hills around it are some O,SNN feet in height and their surface is divided and broken up by long ridges and deep glens or valleys which extend far up towards the summits.These ridges and glens are for the most part richly wooded, while all the more fertile spots are terraced and under cultivation.The whole scene presents a quiet and charming picture of Nature’s handiwork intermingled with the labour of man.OO
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Fortune also commented on the presence of consular representations near the town and the construction of the foreign settlement, which was underway at the time: On the south side of the harbour there has been a portion of land set apart for the subjects of foreign nations whose Governments have lately made treaties with Japan.The various Consuls, most of whom are also merchants, reside at present in small houses or temples on the sides of the hill behind the settlement. It is an interesting sight to see the flags of several Western nations – English, French,American, and Portuguese – flying at this distance from home.A great portion of the land set apart for the foreign settlement was in the course of being reclaimed from the sea, and ere long a town of considerable size will rise on the shores of this beautiful bay.OP The first list of renters in the O¯ ura district was drawn up on ON October OVTN and signed by the four consuls George Morrison (Britain), John G.Walsh (USA), Joseph H. Evans (Portugal), and Kenneth R. Mackenzie (France). Morrison was the only career diplomat in the foursome;Walsh was proprietor of the American trading firm Walsh & Co., and Evans and Mackenzie, both Britons, were Nagasaki agents for Dent & Co. and Jardine Matheson & Co., respectively, of China, Mackenzie had arrived in Nagasaki several months before the official opening of the port to blaze trails into Japan for his company. He took up residence in a Japanese house near Myo#gyo#ji Temple and undoubtedly played a leading role in the establishment of Japan’s first British consulate there. Robert Fortune mentions being shown around Nagasaki by ‘my friend Mr Mackenzie’ and being ‘received with the most marked politeness by the Japanese – a politeness which I am vain enough to think we did not abuse in the slightest degree’.OQ Entitled ‘Allotment of Land’, the list of renters is provided in the form of a table, with separate columns for ‘frontage’ and ‘rearage.’ The owners of business establishments were given priority in renting the waterfront lots, while public houses and hotels were banished to the rear quarter.The yamate (hillside) neighbourhoods of Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate (also called ‘O¯ ura Yamate’ and ‘Naminohira Yamate’, respectively) were reserved for residences and schools. The first-class lots with frontage on the harbour were snatched up by prominent residents, including none other than acting consuls Walsh, Mackenzie and
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Evans, while the lots in the rear quarter fell to a motley group of other British,American, French and Dutch nationals.OR Although Dutch names appear in the list, neither the Dutch nor the Russians were directly involved in the preparation of land regulations related to the O¯ ura district. The former were still ensconced on Dejima, which remained a separate legal entity, and the latter were sticking close to their lodgings at Goshinji Temple on the other side of Nagasaki Harbour. In a letter to Rutherford Alcock the same month, George Morrison reports that ‘[The Russians] have now three gunboats here, and I believe that it is intended always to have at least one, which shows that though without any trading interests in Japan they consider it of importance to have a show of force ever present.’ He also mentions the Chinese and reports that, although the Qing government was yet to sign a formal treaty with the Tokugawa shogunate, the Chinese residents of Nagasaki were enjoying the same rights as other foreigners and in fact were ‘taking advantage of the facilities which foreign powers had obtained to monopolize the trade and to override us with their numbers’. In the same letter, which accompanied the first photographs of Nagasaki taken by Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier,OS Morrison informs his superior that the Japanese residents of Nagasaki ‘take every opportunity of acquiring foreign knowledge’ and that, in addition to Dutch and Chinese, ‘many Japanese are making good progress in Russian, which they seem to consider easier to learn than English; there are however several very tolerably proficient in our language’.OT The Dutch did not compete overtly with the newcomers, perhaps because of pride over their status as Japan’s only European trading partner for more than two centuries and sole supporter of this country’s recent naval, medical and industrial projects. Moreover, they continued to hold exclusive rights to the island of Dejima, where a consulate and office of The Netherlands Trading Society had been established on the site of the former Dutch Factory. After describing the prison-like conditions endured by the Dutch residents of the Edo Period, Robert Fortune recounts his first visit to the island: Such was the state of affairs only three or four years ago.At the time of my visit in the autumn of OVTN all this had undergone a wonderful change – certainly wonderful for Japan.The old bridge which connects the island with the town of Nagasaki is still there, and presents a venerable and somewhat ruinous aspect; the
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guardhouse is now empty,the gate has been removed, a part of the wall has been thrown down, and the Dutch are no longer the prisoners they once were. Like other foreigners, they can now visit the town when they choose, and roam about the surrounding country to any distance within twenty-five or thirty miles, without any interference from the Japanese. In my wanderings in Desima [sic] I stumbled upon a large rough piece of rock, on which were carved the words ‘Kaempfer’ and ‘Thunberg’. No other eulogy was necessary. It is pleasing to note that the modern Dutch reverence the names of these men of science who have done so much to make us acquainted with the people and natural productions of Japan.OU The construction of buildings in O¯ ura and their inhabitation by foreign renters started immediately. The renters laid out various specifications regarding the size and shape of doors, windows and floors and the instalment of chimneys and other European-style fixtures, but the Japanese carpenters naturally implemented indigenous building techniques and used hinoki cedar planks, ceramic roof tiles,Amakusa sandstone and all the other materials they had used for generations in Japanese buildings.They also utilized the red bricks baked at the Nagasaki Iron Works and glass window panes, brass door knobs, iron fireplace grates and other accessories imported from Shanghai. The result was an unprecedented amalgamation of Japanese and European architectural styles and the first mingling of Japanese and foreigners on the civilian level. Referred to variously as yo#fu#kenchiku (Western-style architecture), ijinkan (foreigner’s building) and yo#kan (Western building) – and in Nagasaki as oranda yashiki (Dutch house), a term harking back to the days of the Dejima Factory – this eclectic style was similar to the so- called ‘compradorial style’ common in the early Chinese treaty ports in that it stemmed, not from professional architectural designs, but from rough sketches by European owners interpreted freely by native carpenters. The consuls issued an order for all foreign residents still lingering in the Japanese town to move into the confines of the foreign settlement by OS April OVTO.This was delayed a few weeks when Japanese authorities asked renters to wait until all the spring crops had been harvested by local farmers,OV but, by the time wisteria blossoms dressed the skirts of hills, the multinational community of Nagasaki was ensconced both physically and legally in its new settlement.
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The name of a single woman, Caroline Wicks, stands out conspicuously in the list of people renting lots in the foreign settlement. A native of San Francisco, Wicks had arrived in Nagasaki with her teenage son Alexander soon after the opening of the port and registered as the first renter of No.PS O¯ ura, a corner lot in the rear quarter where she opened a Western-style hotel called the ‘Commercial House’. Fellow American residents Nathaniel Simmons and William Warren followed in her footsteps and opened the Oriental Hotel and Commercial Hotel at Nos. PT and PU, respectively, making this backstreet section of the O¯ ura neighbourhood Japan’s first Western-style hotel block. These hotels were two-storey wood and mortar buildings erected by teams of Japanese workers fusing Euro-American and Japanese construction methods and building materials. They had a restaurant and bar on the first floor, rooms for boarders upstairs, and all the atmosphere of saloons in the American Wild West.OW In the autumn of OVTP, Matthew Green, a Briton hired to serve as constable at the British Consulate, began construction of a finer grade of hotel at No. OO Minamiyamate.The two-storey wooden building, constructed in a square shape around an inner garden, nestled on the skirt of the hill below Myo#gyo#ji Temple and commanded a panoramic view of Nagasaki Harbour.When it reached completion in June the following year the new facility was dubbed ‘Green’s House’ and served during its first months of operation as a temporary receptacle for the British Consulate. Green agreed to rent the building to Her British Majesty’s consul at Nagasaki for a period of two years at XO,VNN per annum.PN The consulate later moved to a new building at No. W Higashiyamate, and Green’s wife Mary came out from Lancashire, England, to join her husband in the operation of the hotel, which they renamed ‘BelleVue Hotel’. Matthew left Nagasaki in OVTT after being convicted of domestic violence, but Mary Green stayed on as proprietor of the hotel until moving to Kobe in OVUN.The BelleVue Hotel would stay in business over the following decades under a series of different proprietors, serving as a choice hostelry and social hub of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Although not mentioned in the initial list of renters compiled in October OVTN, the inhabitant of the first house built on the back lot at No.QO O¯ ura was Albert W.Hansard, the publisher of Japan’s first modern newspaper. A grandson of the noted parliamentary printer Luke Hansard, Albert Hansard had
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undergone training as a printer’s apprentice in his native London and then travelled to New Zealand where he worked at various posts such as secretary to the Auckland Club and the New Zealand Insurance Co. He arrived in Nagasaki in OVTN, apparently carrying his own printing press, and published the first issue of The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser on PP June the following year. In a letter to Rutherford Alcock dated PW May OVTO, British Consul George Morrison relayed Hansard’s request for the appointment of the newspaper as an official organ of the British government and added his personal recommendation to that end.PO The request was accepted, and the first issue of the four- page newspaper carried the following message at the top of its front page:‘OFFICIAL NOTIFICATION.—It is hereby notified that from and after this date, and until further orders, the “Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser”, is to be considered the Official Organ of all Notifications proceeding from Her Britannic Majesty’s Legation, Consulate General, and Consulates in Japan.’This shows that Nagasaki was not only the cradle of foreign-language newspapers in Japan but also the ‘capital’ of international relations during the early months after the opening of the ports. Hansard provided the foreign community with local news, consular messages, advertisements for products and services, and, most importantly, information on the comings and goings of ships carrying precious merchandise and mail. Half of the advertisements he printed on the front page were taken out by businesses in Shanghai, evidence of the umbilical cord connecting Nagasaki with the British community in Shanghai. In October, he decided to move his equipment to Yokohama, where he continued publication of the newspaper under the name The Japan Herald. He remained in Yokohama until OVTS, when deteriorating health forced him to return to England. The founding father of newspaper publishing in Japan died in London the following year, still only forty-five years old. The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser provides vivid glimpses into the life and work of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement as it took its first steps in the summer and autumn of OVTO. Hansard reported the installation of lamps on the O¯ ura waterfront and the recruitment of European constables to form the first foreign settlement police force, published the minutes of the first meetings of the Municipal Council, market reports, and news
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pieces from Britain, and voiced his opinion on a variety of subjects ranging from the question of Chinese residents in the foreign settlement to the latest complaints about the intractability of Japanese officials. One article written by Hansard describes the launching of a yacht – undoubtedly Japan’s first – at the ‘Aberdeen Yard’ established on the edge of the Sagarimatsu waterfront by Scottish shipbuilder James Mitchell: The fact of its being the first appears to have led others beside ourselves to attach an importance to it which would otherwise have not been the case of the launching of a small schooner yacht, for on winding our way to the AberdeenYard, the premises of Mr. J. Mitchell, the energetic builder, we found that we were far from being alone, although it was barely six o’clock, indeed it was evident that a considerable number must have risen with the sun that morning … There was the little vessel, her masts already stepped, all ready to be started into her new life, gaily adorned, in Chatham dockyard style, with scores of flags and pennants … All pronounced ready, the signal given, the dog-shores knocked away, the Champagne sprinkled, the name ‘Phantom’ given and the pretty little vessel slid gently towards her future element; unfortunately however before she had accomplished the necessary distance the ground, which has only recently been made and not yet piled, gave way in consequence of which she gently heeled over, and thus stayed the further proceeding until next tide. Of course for the first few moments a feeling of disappointment and some anxiety prevailed but on examination it was found that the mass of planks forming her cradle was effectually supporting her all along the bilge, and all were put immediately at ease by the assurance that there was no strain or the slightest other hurt.A large party of the company then adjourned to breakfast at the hospitable table of Messrs.Alt and Wright, and there, with many congratulations, toasted,‘Success to the Phantom …’PP As Hansard indicates, the yacht had been commissioned earlier that year by a successful young British merchant named William J. Alt.The Greenwich native had arrived in Nagasaki in OVSW at the age of twenty, going on to establish Alt & Co. and to rake in profits from the sale of second-hand ships, metal ware and fabrics to the representatives of feudal clans and from the export of tea and other Japanese products. He established his office in a two- storey building on the choice waterfront lot at No. U O¯ ura, the most prominent building in the early Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, and acquired rights to No. OR Minamiyamate, a
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hillside residential lot that commanded a spectacular view over Nagasaki Harbour. In early OVTO, he was chosen along with Franklin Field (American) and John Major (British) to lead the Municipal Council, a body formed to manage the daily affairs of the settlement, and in June the same year he was elected to lead the first Chamber of Commerce formed by the foreign merchant body to promote commercial activity, prevent smuggling, and consolidate actions to deal with Chinese competition. In December OVTP, Alt was also appointed to serve as a trustee of a society created to manage the affairs of the newly established British Episcopal Church and foreign cemetery.PQ In the ON July issue of The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, Albert Hansard published a long article outlining the minutes of the first meeting of the Municipal Council.These included an assessment of problems demanding solutions in the settlement, such as the low level of the waterfront, the poor condition of drains, and the stench emanating from O¯ ura Creek at low tide.To finance projects such as the construction of a police box on the waterfront and the installation of lamps, Alt and colleagues recommended that a loan of XO,NNN dollars be taken out and repaid later from the public income. To acquire funds, they recommended the collection of taxes including a small wharfage fee on all import packages, a monthly land tax of XP.NN and XO.SN on waterfront and rear lots respectively, and a monthly tax of XOS.NN on houses of public entertainment because these establish- ments ‘though contributing nothing in the shape of wharfage dues will probably engage a large share of the attention of the police’. In the same issue of the newspaper, Hansard provides a detailed list of recent imports and exports, the former including turkey-red shirting, brocade, handkerchiefs, tin plate, Siamese sappan wood, and sugar, and the latter including vegetable wax, rapeseed oil, cuttlefish, shark fins and timber. William Alt met his future wife, Elisabeth Earl, onboard ship during a trip back to England in OVTQ.The sixteen-year-old daughter of a magistrate in the Straits of Malacca, Elisabeth waited for William in Australia and married him there in September OVTR.The couple returned to Nagasaki before the end of the year, and Elisabeth gave birth to a daughter named Mabel on P July OVTS. In a memoir written later in life, Elisabeth describes the sights and sounds of Nagasaki and the business activities of her husband.While remembering being shocked by the austere living
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conditions in the foreign settlement and the scarcity of familiar foods and comforts, she calls Nagasaki Harbour ‘a vision of beauty’ and describes scenes such as the summer Bon Festival when, according to Buddhist custom, hundreds of boats carrying the spirits of deceased ancestors were set on fire by Japanese residents and floated out onto the harbour. She also describes an evening excursion by boat: On the hot summer evenings, when the sun was going down, we used to go out in my boat with six rowers along the coves and little bays that ran along the harbour side and sometimes bathed in one of the most retired of them.We planned a moonlight picnic for one night when the moon was at its fullest, and a large party of us set out in good spirits and with the promise of a calm and gentle evening.We landed at an enticing place and had just got our supper spread out when a strange darkness came over us and we realized that we were to be treated to a full eclipse of the moon! A hasty re-embarkation changed the proceedings and a further undesired change came when the wind got up, and our promised pleasure ended in gloom and seasickness.PR Alt left Nagasaki with his family in October OVTV to establish an office in Osaka but stayed there only eighteen months before proceeding toYokohama.PS Alt & Co. continued to prosper under the leadership of Henry Hunt and Alt’s nephew Frederick Hellyer, but William decided to relinquish his connection with the company and to return to England in OVUP, apparently because of poor health and the strong wishes of his wife.After returning to England, the Alt family settled in Surrey and later in the Kensington neighbourhood of London.They also had a villa at Rappallo, Italy.William died in Italy in OWNV at the age of sixty- eight.Alt & Co. was finally dissolved in OVVO, when William’s successors Henry Hunt and Frederick Hellyer went their separate ways, establishing Hunt & Co. and Hellyer & Co., respectively, in Kobe. The most conspicuous reminder of William Alt’s stay in Nagasaki is the house at No. OR Minamiyamate that he built for his family in OVTS. A nationally designated ju#yo#bunkazai (Important Cultural Asset) preserved today in Glover Garden,PT the stone and wood building is a Western-Japanese hybrid featuring foundations and walls of Amakusa sandstone,Tuscan stone pillars and a Japanese-style roof.The rooms are relatively small, branching off an L-shaped inner corridor, but they have
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high ceilings and tall windows providing a generous view over the harbour.At the rear, a brick building is connected to the house by a sheltered corridor and contains a kitchen and servants’ quarters.The house was the grandest private residence in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and home for a succession of prominent foreign families, and today its walls and corridors continue to whisper tales of tragedy and romance.PU The builder of the Alt House was a Japanese master carpenter named Koyama Hidenoshin, who had taken on most of the building contracts from foreign residents since the opening of the port and who by this time had become skilled at amalgamating European architectural designs with Japanese construction techniques and building materials.PV Koyama’s first large-scale creation in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement was the Episcopal Church at No. OO Higashiyamate, a white clapboard structure with a spire and belfry at the front and American-style interior built in OVTP.PW The building collapsed due to old age in OWOT and little evidence of it can be found even in historical documents and photographs, but it certainly deserves recognition as Japan’s first Protestant church. In a letter to his superiors in Edo, British Consul Charles Winchester reported the opening of the church for divine service on PT October OVTP and expressed gratitude to Channing M. Williams, ‘a native of Virginia and missionary connected with the American Episcopal Church to whose gratuitous kindness the community at this port have during the last three years have been indebted for the opportunity of attending church’. About the new facility he says:‘The neat little building is the first Christian church opened in Nagasaki since the relentless expulsion of the Native Christians from the city more than two centuries ago.’QN Williams and his colleague John Liggins had arrived in Nagasaki a few days before the official opening of the treaty ports in July OVSW.As Winchester points out, the Protestant missionary had been conducting religious services for the first three years of the foreign settlement period, albeit in locations other than a formal church, such as rooms arranged for the purpose in the British Consulate.QO In April OVTN, when the foreign settlement groundwork was still incomplete and foreign residents were billeted in temples and other temporary lodgings in the Japanese town,Williams had welcomed George Smith, the bishop of Hong Kong, to Nagasaki on the first leg of the latter’s tour of Japan and
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conducted what they deemed to be the first formal religious service in this country.The venue was Daitokuji, an abandoned Buddhist temple near the old Chinese Quarter that was serving as a temporary residence for foreigners. Smith described these services in detail, along with a comment on the Japanese reaction, in his book TenWeeks in Japan: On Sunday April OSth I held our first public service according to the Liturgy of the Church of England, which I was able to continue on each of the five Sundays over which my stay in the city extended. Our congregation consisted of British,American and a few Dutch residents, augmented by officers and seamen from some of the merchant-vessels in port. Our number varied from twenty to forty persons according to the state of the weather.The scene of our little assemblage was a building named Dai Toku Ji, ‘the Temple of GreatVirtue’ … The occasion was one of almost historical interest to our minds, the first formal gathering of our countrymen for divine worship in this long-exclusive land, the first instance of an Anglican clergyman and bishop officiating among his fellow-Christians in the territory of Japan, offering up their prayers to the Almighty through that Saviour whose cross had been the material emblem on which the surrounding pagans were taught to trample with hatred and contempt, and singing the praises of the Redeemer in that same locality which had ever previously resounded with the chanting of Buddhist monks and prayers to false gods.QP Smith reports that the services at Daitokuji elicited displeasure among Japanese authorities and that ‘a native interpreter attached to the local custom-house informed a mercantile friend of my acquaintance that the occurrence would not be suffered to pass unnoticed, and that an official protest was in course of being drawn up for transmission to the British Consul’. This protest was apparently never delivered, but the clash between foreign residents and Japanese authorities over religious activities only escalated. After completion, the Episcopal Church, or ‘English Church’, in Higashiyamate became a hub for the residents of the foreign settlement, but in the context of Japan at large it was a paradox because the Tokugawa shogunate, while reluctantly acknowledg- ing the right of foreigners to enjoy religious freedom, continued to enforce a strict ban on Christianity among the Japanese population, outlawing attempts by missionaries to win Japanese converts and only stepping up its efforts to suppress the religion in the local community.
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The struggle to keep news of Christianity out of Japanese ears continued despite the decision by local authorities, who were well aware that English was the up and coming lingua franca of international business and diplomacy, to employ Protestant missionaries as instructors at the language training institute established in Nagasaki in OVSV. One of the most prominent was Guido Verbeck, a Dutch-born missionary of the Reformed Church in America who came to Nagasaki in OVSW and started English lessons at his home.Although his primary purpose was to introduce Christianity and to save souls,Verbeck had to stick to grammar and pronunciation because his students risked severe punishment if they showed any interest in the banned religion. His dignity and skill as a teacher was nevertheless recognized and Japanese authorities asked him to teach at a school of foreign studies calledYo#gakusho in OVTR. More than ONN students enrolled at the school, among them O¯ kuma Shigenobu (future prime minister and founder of Waseda University) and other builders of the new Japan. Like C.M.Williams, who rented the lot at No. OO Higashiyamate for the construction of the Episcopal Church, Verbeck acquired No. Q Higashiyamate as a site for a similar facility of the Reformed Church in America, but he left Nagasaki for Tokyo before erecting a building on the lot. One reminder of GuidoVerbeck in present-day Nagasaki is a tiny gravestone in the Dutch cemetery at Goshiji Temple. On PT January OVTN,Verbeck’s wife Maria (née Manion) gave birth to a daughter said to be the first Caucasian child born in Japan.The couple chose the name ‘Emma Japonica’ to celebrate this distinction, but the baby died only two weeks later.QQ Although the Protestant missionaries undoubtedly planted the seeds of a new world view in the minds of Japanese students, they not only failed to win converts among the people they encountered, but also tried in vain to attract the descendants of the underground Christians who, rumour had it, were living in remote areas near Nagasaki.This rumour would prove to be true, but it was Catholic priests despatched from France, not the British or American Protestant ministers, who made the startling discovery.QR In OVTQ, missionaries from the Société des Mission Etrangères de Paris (Paris Foreign Missions Society) arrived in Nagasaki at the behest of Leon Dury, a physician who had been assigned to the position of French consul here in November the previous
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year and who had acquired the choice lot at No. OA Minami- yamate for the construction of a Catholic church.QS A team of Japanese labourers led by Koyama Hidenoshin built the pseudo- gothic structure with twin spires, stained glass windows and other accoutrements ordered by the French priests. Dedicated in February OVTS, the church looked out over the town of Nagasaki towards Nishizaka, the execution ground where the Twenty-Six Saints of Japan had been martyred some two and a half centuries earlier. Only a few weeks after the dedication of the church, Fr Bernard Petitjean noticed a group of peasants milling at the front gate and invited them up the stairs to look at the building. He later reported his exchange with these people as follows: On Friday, March OUth, towards OP:QN p.m., a group of some twelve to fifteen men, women and children were standing in front of the newly erected Church of the Twenty-six Martyrs.Their behaviour denoted more than curiosity.I was certainly inspired by my Guardian Angel to go and see them.The door of the Church had been shut. I opened it; then followed by my visitors and calling upon them God’s Blessing I proceeded towards the Sanctuary.When I arrived before the Tabernacle I knelt down and adored our Lord Jesus Christ in the Holy Eucharist. I worshipped Him and earnestly begged Him to vouchsafe on my lips the words that might touch my hearers and gain some of them to his Love. But I had scarcely been praying the time of an Our Father when three women aged from about SN to TN years, came and knelt near me; and then one of them, placing her hand on her heart, said to me in a whisper as if fearing the walls might betray her words: ‘The heart of all those present is the same as yours.’ ‘Indeed!’ I replied,‘but from where do you come?’ ‘We are all from Urakami.At Urakami nearly all have the same heart as we have.’ And the woman asked again ‘Where is the Figure of the Virgin Mary?’ On hearing this name I doubted no more that I was in the presence of the ancient Japanese Christians.QT Petitjean learned that underground Christians were living, not only in the Urakami area north of the city of Nagasaki, but also in cells scattered across nearby islands and remote villages.After this encounter, he and the other French priests defied Japanese law and made surreptitious visits to the homes of the Japanese Christians.These activities came to the attention of the Nagasaki
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Magistrate, who reacted swiftly and mercilessly by prohibiting further contact between the priests and peasants and threatening the latter with death by execution if they persisted in their disobedience. The general Japanese reaction to the church, which was referred to in the local community as furansu dera (‘French temple’), is reflected by a comment from Hiramatsu Giemon, a samurai from Karatsu (in present-day Saga Prefecture) who visited Nagasaki in OVTS and saw the statue of Christ on the cross at the church. In his memoir, Hiramatsu describes his horror and dismay over what he construed to be a depiction of brutal murder.QU The suppression of Christianity in the Japanese community and the face-off between Japanese authorities and the foreign community would continue until OVUQ when the ban was finally lifted. It is remarkable, nevertheless, that Nagasaki saw virtually none of the heckling, throwing of stones or injury that persistently marred the missionary experience in China, a fact that reflects the relatively tolerant attitude of the common people towards the foreigners’ strange religion. In the interval between the construction of the Protestant and Catholic churches, Koyama Hidenoshin undertook a contract from a young Scottish merchant-adventurer named Thomas Blake Glover to build a house at No. Q Minamiyamate, a hillside residential lot with a panoramic view over the grey mosaic of rooftops in Nagasaki and the full length of the harbour. The house was completed in OVTQ, two years before William Alt built his famous house further along the hillside at No. OR Minamiyamate. An L-shaped wooden bungalow, the Glover house featured a Japanese-style roof with ceramic kawara tiles, brick chimneys, and a low flagstone-paved veranda with a ceiling of woven wood strips. The rooms had coal-burning fireplaces with British-style mantels, hardwood floors waiting for carpets, high ceilings, and large windows and doors with ribbed shutters. The house borrowed from the colonial styles prevalent in the ports of India and China, but it was essentially a Japanese structure built by Japanese hands, an example of the compromise between Japanese and European architecture that was already becoming the characteristic style of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Glover called the house ‘Ipponmatsu’(‘Lone Pine’) in honour of the great pine tree growing beside it for as long as anyone could remember. After completion, it stood on the Minamiyamate hillside like a new-
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generation castle symbolizing the importance of commercial wealth and international exchange as Japan emerged from the shadow of feudal isolation. The building remains to this day as the oldest Western-style building in Japan, a nationally designated Important Cultural Asset, and the showpiece of the Glover Garden complex. A native of Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Thomas Glover had arrived in Nagasaki in September OVSW at the age of twenty-one to take up a position under fellow Scotsman Kenneth R. Mackenzie, local agent for Jardine Matheson & Co., acting French consul, and a veteran of British commercial activities in East Asia. Glover declared his independence as a ‘general commission agent’ on O May OVTO,QV and then announced in February the following year that he and his partner Francis Groom were acquiring the firm run previously by Nagasaki resident Robert Arnold and establishing a new one under the style of ‘Glover & Co’.QW This brought the young Aberdonian into direct competition with Major & Co., Alt & Co. and the other foreign firms pushing Nagasaki into the whirlpool of business activity in East Asia. His house on the Minamiyamate hillside served as both a house and a reception parlour for Japanese guests, particularly the representatives of feudal clans hankering after second-hand ships, guns and ammunition and trying to strike deals for exchanges with local products like tea, timber, vegetable wax and camphor oil. In September OVTP, Glover’s younger brother James joined the company as partner along with Edward Harrison, formerly Nagasaki representative of the Shanghai firm Blain Tate & Co. Glover led the way in turning Japanese tea into Nagasaki’s most important export item and establishing a network of growers, producers and exporters that extended deep into the Kyushu hinterland.Already strong in Europe for decades, the demand for tea had expanded to North America around the same time as the opening of Japan’s doors, and foreign tea exporters in China looked to Nagasaki as a new supply base. Glover and his contemporaries established tea-firing ‘godowns’ (factories) in the O¯ ura neighbourhood where hundreds of Japanese workers re- fired and packed the tea carried in from the countryside. In her memoir, Elisabeth Alt provides a vivid description of one of the tea-firing godowns in O¯ ura: In our early days in Nagasaki, the first place I lived in Japan and where my elder children were born, excitement was raised by the
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sudden whim of the great American nation in favour of drinking Japanese tea. My husband quickly responded by getting ready and sending off the first ship that left Japan with an entire load of Japanese tea. I think she was called the ‘Swanley’. It was the beginning of the tea season when the crops were coming in from the neighbouring country. It came in quite raw and the tea leaves had to be dried and then packed, and, under the circumstances of haste, the drying (or firing) and packing had to be done in the quickest possible time.The firing is done in large ‘godowns’ or warehouses.The process may be quite different now but in those days it was somewhat like that which I shall now describe.The firing went on night and day in shifts, about three or four hundred people working at a time – as many women as men it seemed to me. I went to see the work at night with my husband and it was a kind of inferno.There were hundreds of copper pans of red hot charcoal and over these were being dried the raw green leaves of the tea, jerked from side to side of large flat baskets – never still for a moment.The large high building lighted by flares of some kind, the burning charcoal, the misty dust or steam from the leaves, the perspiring men and women, the former almost quite naked, the latter naked to the waist – it was an inferno! Then added to these sights there was a din of indescribable noise – packing of the tea seemed to be going on in the same great hall or shed, [where] packing seemed mostly to consist of the wooden chests into which men were pouring the already ‘fired’ tea being shaken violently from one side to the other, to make the tea settle down… A hundred chests or more can cause a terrible noise under the process, especially on a hard wooden floor. I did not stay long nor did I again visit the godowns at night. From his earliest days in Japan,Thomas Glover cut an unusual figure among his British and American colleagues by his eagerness to cross the cultural-linguistic border and to engage in direct encounters with Japanese people. As a result he developed such ability in the Japanese language and knowledge of Japanese culture and customs that he turned into a kind of freelance diplomat. In OVTQ, less that four years after his arrival in Japan, British Consul George Morrison reported to his superiors in Edo that,‘Mr Glover is fluent in the Japanese language and is on terms of intimacy and friendship with many Japanese of rank, amongst whom he is much esteemed.’RN In addition to trade negotiations, discussions in the office of Glover & Co. included whispered requests from young Japanese samurai for the Scotsman’s assistance in travelling abroad. Glover responded with his full
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cooperation, providing transportation and making other arrangements for forward-thinking samurai to smuggle themselves out of Japan and to study in England. One of the recipients of these favours was a young samurai of the Cho#shu# Clan named Ito# Hirobumi, who would later serve as the prime minister of Japan for four terms. The international relations unfolding in Nagasaki were under- pinned by goodwill and cooperation, but they did not come without detractors, even among the samurai classes benefitting from the generosity of Thomas Glover and other foreigners. Conservative elements angered by the activities of foreigners protested the opening of Japan’s doors and on several occasions took the matter into their own hands, roaming the streets of the treaty ports and attacking any foreigner who happened to appear in their line of vision.The joi (‘expel the foreign presence’) sentiment blackening the heart of some samurai caused strain, grief and hatred even in the relatively peaceful port of Nagasaki. One victim was Charles Collins, a twenty-seven-year-old coal stoker on the British man-of-war HMS Odin who passed out drunk on a Nagasaki backstreet in August OVTO and was later found lying dead in a pool of his own blood.RO British-Japanese relations soured even more sharply in September the following year when Charles L. Richardson, a British merchant from Shanghai on holiday inYokohama, was killed by retainers of the feudal lord of Satsuma when his horse accidentally interfered with a procession on a narrow road near the treaty port.The shogunate, anxious to avoid a confrontation, submitted a formal apology to the British and offered an indemnity of ON,NNN pounds.The Satsuma Clan, however, refused to either apologize or pay an indemnity,insisting that Richardson had been at fault by failing to pay proper respect to the feudal lord. The British rebutted by pointing to the guarantee of extraterritoriality embedded in the Ansei Treaties, which they said exonerated Richardson of any wrongdoing. The impasse sent ripples of fear through the foreign settlements of Japan.The level of anxiety was so high in Nagasaki that British residents called an emergency meeting on OQ May OVTQ to decide whether or not to abandon the settlement.RP A letter was sent to George Morrison asking for an armed military guard to be placed in the settlement to protect British property and for assurances that the Japanese government would
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compensate property destroyed or looted in the event of an evacuation. Morrison responded that no guard would be placed in the settlement but that ‘an armed boat would cruise off the coast to cover the retreat of the community in case of an enemy attack’. He also promised to contact the Nagasaki Magistrate and to submit an inquiry about the status of British property. Only three days later,Thomas Glover sent a letter to his sponsors at Jardine Matheson & Co. in Shanghai, reporting that,‘War now appears inevitable and the communities are leaving the port with their valuables.The Governor states that a distinction will be made between the different nationalities, but the Americans, Dutch and other foreigners do not put much faith in this …’RQ Glover and his fellow Britons decided to stay in Nagasaki and to brace themselves for a collision as best they could, stowing their valuables on the British ships anchored in Nagasaki Harbour, gathering for mutual protection in the Alt & Co. office on the O¯ ura waterfront every evening, and keeping up a ‘vigilant guard throughout the night’. While the foreign residents of Nagasaki slept with rifles under their bedcovers, O¯ mura Sumihiro, feudal lord of the O¯ mura Clan and the newly appointed Nagasaki Magistrate, assembled forces in preparation for the defence of Nagasaki and environs.RR The suspense rose to a climax in August when the British, hoping to suppress the anti-foreign movement, despatched seven warships to Kagoshima and submitted a set of demands directly to the leaders of the Satsuma Clan. When these were rejected, the British destroyed three steamships anchored in the harbour and fired on the city, causing considerable damage. Conversely, the retaliation by the Japanese resulted in the death of several British personnel, including the commander of one of the warships.As a result of this skirmish, known today as the ‘Anglo-Satsuma War’,the feudal lord of Satsuma, Shimazu Hisamitsu, was duly impressed by the show of British military might and paid the indemnity before the end of the year.The Satsuma Clan, in fact, made an abrupt turnabout, acknowledging the importance of modernizing Japan along Western lines and adopting a policy of fukoku kyo#hei (‘enrich the country and strengthen the army’) to promote trade and industry in cooperation with the countries of the West. No sooner had the Anglo-Satsuma War ended than the British had to deal with another antagonist, the Cho#shu# Clan (present- dayYamaguchi Prefecture), which had fired on foreign vessels
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passing through the Strait of Shimonoseki, one of Nagasaki’s most vital lifelines. An international force speedily vanquished the Cho#shu# troops in September OVTR, and the clan eventually adopted a tack similar to that of the Satsuma Clan and cooperated with the foreign powers. In his memoir, student interpreter and future British envoy to Japan Ernest Satow recalls his involvement in the combat at Shimonoseki and subsequent reconciliation with the rebel samurai, and he comments that, ‘It is not a little remarkable that neither the Satsuma nor the Choshiu [sic] men ever seemed to cherish any resentment against us for what we had done, and during the years of disturbance and revolution that followed they were always our most intimate allies.’RS He also expresses the changing British attitude towards the rebelling clans, which had been regarded to date as loose cannons: Having beaten the Choshiu people, we had come to like and respect them, while a feeling of dislike had begun to arise in our minds for the Tycoon’s [shogun’s] people on account of their weakness and double-dealing, and from this time onwards I sympathized more and more with the daimio [sic] party, from whom the Tycoon’s government had always tried to keep us apart.RT In March OVTT, the two former rivals came together to form the ‘Satsuma-Cho#shu# Alliance’, an agreement that challenged the power of the Tokugawa shogunate and laid the first stepping- stone to the Meiji Restoration. In July the same year,Thomas Glover arranged for a visit by the British Minister Sir Harry Parkes to the stronghold of the Satsuma Clan in Kagoshima. Three ships carrying the minister and his wife,Thomas Glover and several other British representatives sailed into the harbour that only three years earlier had been the site of a bloody duel between the forces of the clan and the Royal Navy. Shimazu Hisamitsu extended a lavish welcome to the group and opened the way for a new era of friendship and cooperation.RU Thomas Glover continued to deepen his association with the clan and to assist in its efforts to promote foreign trade and industrial projects. Half a century later, the author of Glover’s obituary in The Nagasaki Press wrote about his close connection to the Satsuma Clan as follows: Concerning his relations with [Lord Shimazu of the Satsuma Clan], an interesting story is told which illustrates in a striking manner Mr. Glover’s grand style of living in those days and the
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great Satsuma chief’s high estimation of him as a friend. Shimazu sent one of his chief retainers to ask Mr. Glover to pay him a visit. The retainer on coming back reported that the famous British merchant kept a retinue of servants and lived in a style that would befit a ‘daimyo’ of QNN,NNN ‘koku’ income. Mr. Glover was received by the prince with open arms and treated with the utmost honour, being seen several times riding out side by side with him, an honour never offered by a daimyo except to a fellow daimyo.RV Thomas Glover enjoyed booming business in spite of, or rather because of, the political unrest rocking Japan in the dying years of the Edo Period. After the smoke settled in Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, his company was flooded with orders for ships, arms and ammunition as the rebelling clans of southwestern Japan and the Tokugawa shogunate engaged in an increasingly belligerent face-off. In fact, it raced to the head of the pack, surpassing Alt & Co. and growing into the most important trading enterprise in Nagasaki.RW Glover opened branch offices inYokohama and Shanghai and placed his trusted partners Edward Harrison and Francis Groom, respectively,in charge.The latter spearheaded the establishment of the Union Steam Navigation Co. and went on to challenge the monopoly onYangtze River trade enjoyed by the American firm Russell & Co.SN During this period, he engaged in currency exchange activities to take advantage of fluctuations in the Mexican dollar-ichibugin exchange rate and the disparity between rates in Nagasaki and Yokohama, established new tea-firing facilities and actively acquired the title deeds to property in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement as a source of rental income as well as collateral against loans taken out from Jardine Matheson & Co. Glover & Co. also began to move large amounts of money selling ships to Japanese buyers, an activity that turned Nagasaki into the busiest port in Japan. Of the OTP ships imported to Japan in the period from OVTN to OVUN, OOP were sold here.SO Glover & Co. also assumed the prestigious position of local agent for Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, five international insurance companies, and the influential Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and Oriental Banking Corporation. In May OVTS, Nagasaki was stirred by the arrival of a steam locomotive on the waterfront in the foreign settlement, an event that may have been completely forgotten if not for the discovery of a scrap of related information by a British researcher in OWOV
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and his relationship with a Japanese colleague in Nagasaki.The author of an article in The Nagasaki Press explains as follows: It is generally understood that the first railway in Japan was laid between Tokyo and Yokohama by British engineers and was opened in OVUP.The following extract from The Railway Times (London) of July PPnd, OVTS, indicates that several years before the Tokyo-Yokohama line was built, Nagasaki, keeping with its position as the first foreign trade port of the country (ignoring Hirado) possessed a railway of its own:‘Japan:A railroad, with a locomotive engine and tender, is in operation on the Bund, at Nagasaki, and excites a great deal of attention among the Japanese, who come from far and near to see it.’We do not remember to have previously heard of this Nagasaki railway.The extract from The Railway Times, quoted above, was recently received by Professor Muto, of the Nagasaki Higher School of Commerce, from Mr.W.W.Tomlinson, a prominent British railway engineer and author of a book entitled ‘The North Eastern Railway: Its Rise and Development.’ Mr.Tomlinson came across the cutting while going through the accumulations of a lifetime and thought it would interest Mr. Muto, whom he had met in England.There are still foreigners in Nagasaki who resided here in OVTS and we hope to be able to obtain from them some particulars of the railway, which was probably at Deshima, the only part of the city likely to have had a Bund at that time.SP Four days later, an elderly American resident named Edward Lake, who had been living in Nagasaki since OVTP, responded in a letter to the editor: I beg to inform you that there was a waterfront street at Oura, Nagasaki, about OV feet wide and extending from Lot O to Lot OO, Oura … Your remark about a railroad and engines and cars being laid down in Deshima is a mistake. In OVTS–OVTT,T.B. Glover & Co. or connection placed a temporary track and ran a small engine and two cars from No. O to No. ON to show the public.This engine and the cars were simply small models.SQ The following scenario can be conjectured from the above information: Thomas Glover purchased the locomotive in Shanghai or some other Chinese port and carried it to Nagasaki, where he laid several hundred metres of track along the O¯ ura waterfront and drove it on demonstration runs. The locomotive was a small model but sufficient in size and power to pull passenger cars. The people jamming the streets gaped at the unprecedented spectacle of a machine lumbering down tracks under its own
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power and cried with pleasure when their turn came to ride in one of the passenger cars. Meanwhile, a characteristic smile of satisfaction shone on the Scotman’s face as he watched the excitement and listened to the gasps of amazement from his Japanese audience. Japan’s first fully-fledged railway opened between Yokohama and Tokyo in OVUP, and Nagasaki had to wait until OVWV to be connected to the national train system, but it was Thomas Glover who took the initiative in awakening the Japanese people to the potential of steam locomotion, and it was Nagasaki that served as the first receptacle and testing ground for the technology of a new age. The introduction of the locomotive also signalled the beginning of a transformation in Thomas Glover from trader in merchandise to purveyor of the fruits of the Industrial Revolution. In OVTU and early OVTV, events in Japan fell over each other like a row of dominoes.With the death of his father Emperor Ko#mei, the fourteen year-old Crown Prince Mutsuhiro acceded to the ancient throne early in the year. Tokugawa Yoshinobu had similarly assumed the post of shogun in the wake of the sudden death of Tokugawa Iemochi in OVTT. Unable any longer to stem the tide of revolt,Yoshinobu and his council of feudal lords decided to bring the old system to an end and to transfer national administration to the new emperor.The Tokugawa shogunate came to an official end in November, and the young Mutsuhiro was granted full legislative powers in January the following year. On T February OVTV, British Consul Marcus Flowers visited the Nagasaki Magistrate Kawazu Izunokami to confer with him about the measures being taken to prevent chaos in the city and to protect foreign life and property in the event of a disturbance. A clearly disoriented Kawazu replied that he had received no news or instructions from the defunct shogunate and, on the contrary, surprised the consul by asking for British assistance. Flowers replied that any measures taken by the British, including the deployment of warships in Nagasaki Harbour,‘would be for the protection of the foreign settlement only, and that British authorities would preserve a strict neutrality in any struggle that might take place’.SR It may be no coincidence that Kawazu, the last in a long line of bugyo# despatched to Nagasaki since the seventeenth century, hastily removed all his belongings from the magistrate’s office and fled the city by ship under the cover of night only two days later.SS
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One of the events that hurtled Japan into revolution was a tragic incident in Nagasaki in August OVTU.Attacks on foreigners by disgruntled samurai had continued in the mid-OVTNs despite vehement cries of protest from the foreign community, and the Tokugawa shogunate had repeatedly showed its inability both to bring the culprits to justice and to dissuade its citizens from further crimes.The residents of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement were still reeling in horror from the murder of an American sailor named George Bunker in June OVTU when, on the night of S August, two sailors visiting Nagasaki on the British ship HMS Icarus were killed in the Maruyama neighbourhood.The pair, Robert Foad and John Hutchings (both twenty-three years old), came ashore with their shipmates and proceeded to the entertainment quarter, where they drank themselves into a stupor and passed out on the street.Their friends left them on the doorstep of a bar to sleep it off, but when they returned they found the two men lying dead in a pool of blood and displaying gashes left by swords.As usual, the subsequent investigation was hindered by sluggishness on the part of Japanese authorities, and it convinced the British government, once and for all, that the Tokugawa shogunate was no longer able to govern its own citizens, let alone to protect the life and property of foreigners. Hearing that a ship of theTosa Clan had left Nagasaki Harbour the night of the murders, British Consul Marcus Flowers pointed a blaming finger at the Kaientai, a group of Tosa samurai working in Nagasaki.To prove their innocence, the Tosa samurai launched their own investigation and, months later, found that the crime had been perpetrated by a samurai of the Chikuzen (Fukuoka) Clan and that the clan, while ordering the guilty samurai to take responsibility by committing ritual suicide, had kept the whole affair secret.The murderer’s companions were later imprisoned and the lord of Chikuzen ordered to pay an indemnity to the families of the dead seamen, but, by the time the case was finally settled, the feudal system had dissolved and Japan had embarked on a new era of modernization and international cooperation.ST When it woke up to the birth of a new Japan in OVTV, the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement was complete in physical shape as well as business and social orientation. It now consisted of eight distinct neighbourhoods including the commercial districts of O¯ ura and Sagarimatsu and the hillside residential neighbourhoods of Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate.After the extension of the
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foreshore in OVTR, part of Hirobaba had been absorbed into a new neighbourhood called Umegasaki (often called ‘Megasaki’ by foreigners) where official Japanese institutions such as the central post office and custom house shared space with foreign enterprises. Dejima Island, the site of the former Dutch Factory, had been incorporated into the foreign settlement in OVTT.The last addition was the Chinese residential district of Shinchi.This artificial island, which had been built adjacent to Dejima in the eighteenth century as a site for warehouses, was incorporated into the foreign settlement in OVTV, the same year as the official abolition of the old Chinese Quarter. The results of surveys conducted by Japanese authorities reveal the growth in the foreign population of Nagasaki, from QWU in OVTS to SUR in late OVTV.SU In OVTS, the breakdown was PRT Chinese, TT British, QQ American, PT Dutch, OO French, ON German, Q Portuguese and P Russian residents; in OVTV the numbers had increased across the board to QUS Chinese, VO British, QW American, QN Dutch, OS French, PN German, V Portuguese and T Swedish residents. Chinese residents far outnumbered people of other nationalities: TP% and TS% of the total foreign population in OVTS and OVTV, respectively.Although discussions related to the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement tend to focus on the activities of Europeans, people of Chinese origin predominated throughout the period, just as they had in the Edo Period. After the opening of the port in OVSW, they were unable to rent land in the settle- ment because China was not among the countries concluding trade pacts with the Tokugawa shogunate.As noted by the British consul of Nagasaki in OVTN, however, the Chinese contingent was strengthened by its large numbers, if not by closer cultural and historical ties with Japan. Some Chinese residents established offices, shops and restaurants in the grey-zone of the Hirobaba neighbourhood, while others found positions under the wing of foreign merchants such as John Major,William Alt and Thomas Glover. During the period from OVTP to OVUN, a total of about O,OSN Chinese were employed in foreign trading firms in Nagasaki. Thomas Glover, for one, employed OQP Chinese assistants during the period.SV Japan would ratify a commercial and diplomatic treaty with the Qing Dynasty in OVUQ, finally giving Chinese residents official sanction to establish independent businesses and rent land in the foreign settlement. By that time, however, a large number of
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Chinese companies and shops had already appeared in the O¯ ura neighbourhood, which was closer to the vanguard of harbour activity and placed Chinese merchants in a better position to vie with Western rivals for a share in the burgeoning trade. Companies like Ceaupseng & Co. and Kung On & Co. took out advertisements in the English-language press and ran a fleet of ships that enjoyed a brisk trade, importing goods such as Chinese rice, cotton, sugar, beans and cloth and exporting dried fish and other Japanese products. Dozens of Chinese enterprises operated in the backstreet sections of the O¯ ura neighbourhood during the foreign settlement period, sometimes squeezing together in clusters of twenty or more on a single lot.SW These sardine-like conditions created a kind of ghetto that was derided by Westerners as the ‘New Chinese Quarter’ of Nagasaki.TN In a report on trade conditions in Nagasaki dated January OVTW, British Consul Marcus Flowers reports that a total of TPW Chinese were living in Nagasaki, including PQU in the Chinese Quarter, TN in Shinchi and QQP in the foreign settlement, adding that their trade with the ports of China was so overpowering that other foreign merchants could simply not compete.TO In early OVUN, the editor of The Nagasaki Express reiterated this complaint, informing readers that Chinese merchants enjoyed more than half of Nagasaki’s total import and export trade.TP Despite their business success and legal parity, however, the Chinese residents of the O¯ ura neighbourhood huddled together in modest wood and brick buildings, surrounded by cultural, linguistic and racial barriers that imitated those of the treaty ports in China. Not a single Chinese resident ever inhabited one of the grand houses on the Minamiyamate or Higashiyamate hillsides, further evidence that the Chinese and Euro-American communities tended to exist here in parallel, rarely colliding but at the same time seldom interacting except on the business level. The cultural distance and disdainful attitude of many Western residents is apparent in the following article in The Nagasaki Express depicting the traditional Bon Festival celebrated by Chinese residents (the italics are those of the original article): The annual festival of the Yue-lan-seng-wui consisting of a torchlight procession, the burning of joss papers, etc., took place last night in this settlement, and appeared to pass off to the entire satisfaction of the promoters, whose places were gorgeously illuminated with lanterns, and their benches laden with creature
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comforts intended for the imaginary feast that is supposed to be held on this occasion. It was generally understood that the object sought for was the propitiation of the gods, and as one Chinese remarked, confusion to the debbels; but whether the foreign debbels resident at this port were the ones alluded to, our informant was unable to satisfactorily explain.TQ Japan’s political revolution came at a time when Nagasaki’s status as this country’s main entranceway and hub of international activity was waning, and it affected Chinese and Euro-American merchants alike. Many of the foreigners who had invested initially in Nagasaki had already come to the conclusion thatYokohama held greater potential because of its proximity to the centre of Japanese power, because it was more convenient for ships making the voyage to Japan from the west coast of North America, and because it enjoyed the added advantage of direct access to the silk-producing districts of northeastern Japan.The opening of Hyo#go (Kobe) as a treaty port in OVTU only added to the run on Nagasaki’s business fortunes. Foreign firms like Glover & Co. that dealt in weapons and ammunition found themselves in particularly dire straits when the return of peace pulled the plug on a lucrative source of income. Since so much of the company’s business had been based on speculation and gentlemen’s agreements with local domains, the political confusion ensuing in the wake of the Meiji Restoration made it difficult for Glover not only to sell merchandise but also to recoup debts and placate the worries of Jardine Matheson & Co., his prime lender. In December OVTV, the former partnership of Glover & Co. was dissolved, each partner and many employees going their own ways.The business of the Shanghai branch was continued by Francis Groom under the style of Glover, Dow & Co., although Thomas Glover was no longer involved. In Japan, Glover carried on business in association with Kenneth R. Mackenzie, the former Jardine Matheson & Co. agent in Nagasaki who had returned to Japan in OVTU. Mackenzie was placed in charge of the company’s new branch in Hyo#go, but, again, currency fluctuations and competition from Chinese merchants hindered the business in that port.TR With his debts mounting and the promise of profitable trade disappearing, Thomas Glover turned his attention to the introduction of modern industries to Japan.Two of his most
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important undertakings in the immediate post-Restoration period were Japan’s first modern slip dock and coal mine, both located at Nagasaki.Although Glover & Co. engaged in a wide variety of mundane commercial pursuits, including the sale of weapons that stained Japan red during the dying days of the Edo Period, the Scotsman is best remembered as the driving force behind these two essential industries and a key contributor to the modernization of Japan. Most of the first ships bought through foreign firms in Nagasaki were second-hand European-built vessels that had seen service in Chinese waters and in many cases were less than seaworthy.The need for a dock where a ship could be pulled up onto blocks for repairs became urgent in the mid-OVTNs when a large number of ships were changing hands in Nagasaki Harbour. As part of its efforts to ‘enrich the country and strengthen the army’, the Satsuma Clan asked Thomas Glover to cooperate in the construction of a mechanized slip dock.Although the exact circumstances are unclear, it seems that Glover put up XRN,NNN as capital while the Satsuma Clan agreed to provide the site for the dock, a rocky inlet at Kosuge a few hundred metres south of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.TS Glover made arrangements through his brother Charles in Aberdeen to supply all the necessary machinery and fittings. The entire set of dock equipment – including hoisting engine, boiler, gears, chains and rails – was made by the firm Hall Russell & Co. of Aberdeen. Another Aberdeen shipbuilding firm called Alexander Hall & Co. built a five-mast clipper on order from Charles Glover for the sole purpose of carrying all the equipment to Nagasaki.TT Christened the Helen Black, the ship arrived in Nagasaki around the end of OVTU under the watch of a Hall Russell & Co. engineer named D.B. Blaikie, who supervised the instalment of the equipment at Kosuge over the following months.The engine house was built with some of the first red bricks baked in Japan, one of the products of the Nagasaki Iron Foundry established through Japanese-Dutch cooperation in OVSU. Says the author of an article in the PQ January OVTV issue of The NagasakiTimes: The site for the slip has been well chosen and seems expressly designed by nature for the purpose.A great portion of the ways are on the solid rock, it being necessary to pile only about OSN feet of the deepest portion.They are warranted to support a vessel of OPNN tonnes, which we think will be quite sufficient for the requirements
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of the port.The whole of the plant and machinery … was made by Messrs. Hall, Russell & Co. of Aberdeen, and it will, doubtless, be gratifying to that well known firm to hear of the unqualified success of the undertaking.TU When the dock, referred to at the time as the ‘Patent Slip’, reached completion that year, the citizens of Nagasaki were treated to another amazing spectacle: the engines roared and smoke rushed up from the chimney of the engine house as Glover and his associates pulled a ship out of the water and up onto the ways, revealing the entire form of a steamship for the first time in Japan and heralding the dawn of its modern shipbuilding industry.By this time, however, the financial woes of Glover & Co. were deepening, and he decided even before the first ship went in for repairs to sell the dock to the new Meiji Government.The government, which had already taken over the shipyard on the other side of the harbour established in OVSU by Dutch engineers, was anxious to expand its industrial capacity and to prevent foreign companies like Boyd & Co. of Shanghai from acquiring the new facility. Ship repairs began at Kosuge in early OVTW, and the dock was managed from April that year by a team of foreign engineers working under government employ. In OVVU, it was acquired by Mitsubishi Co. along with the shipyard on the other side of the harbour and incorporated into a new facility called the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and Engine Works.TV The establishment of Japan’s first modern coal mine at Takashima is another project that will go down in history as one of Thomas Glover’s most distinguished achievements.Takashima is an oval-shaped island lying like a wave-breaker at the entrance to Nagasaki Harbour, about fifteen kilometres from the city waterfront. Local legend has it that coal was first discovered there by accident in OTWS when an islander named Goheita lit a fire and noticed that the black rock underneath it was burning. During the Edo Period, the Hizen (Saga) Clan collected the coal by primitive methods and sold it as fuel for the pottery kilns at Arita or the salt-making operations along the Seto Inland Sea. As mentioned earlier, crew members of James Stirling’s squadron found evidence of coal diggings on Takashima during excursions by boat in the autumn of OVSR.After the opening of the port in OVSW, British Consul George Morrison sent a letter to the Nagasaki Magistrate suggesting that the mines be developed, but
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the proposal was declined on the grounds that the island was the possession of the feudal lord of the Hizen Clan and therefore out of the magistrate’s sphere of jurisdiction.TW Thomas Glover reached an agreement with the clan to expand production at Takashima by introducing the latest European equipment and technology.The Hizen Clan was aware of the need to join forces with a foreign company in order to obtain the necessary equipment, hire engineers and open new markets. Glover was also eager to develop the mine because it seemed certain to bring lucrative profits. However, Glover was in a delicate position because the Hizen Clan already owed him some XRN,NNN for a second-hand steamship and guns sold earlier. He left Nagasaki in April OVTU and returned to Britain via Hong Kong, where he apparently met with Jardine Matheson & Co. officials to confer about the Takashima Coal Mine and other projects in Japan and to discuss the possibility of investments from that company.UN In Scotland he met with his father and brother Charles and through them gathered investments of about XONN,NNN. He also made arrangements for the purchase of ships and equipment and the employment of engineers. He sailed away from Britain, never to return, and reached Nagasaki in January OVTV just in time to witness the birth of the new Meiji Government. The seven-year contract signed by Glover & Co. and the Hizen Clan in June OVTV stipulated among other things that the former would take complete responsibility for the running of the mine and the export of coal and that the profits would be shared equally after deductions for costs.A supplementary contract called for the Hizan Clan to settle its outstanding debt to Glover & Co. from the profits of the mine. Japan’s first joint industrial venture went ahead as planned. The vertical-shaft mine designed by British engineers revealed a rich seam of coal in April OVTW, and the construction of various facilities reached completion by the end of the year. Hundreds of Japanese labourers organized into teams on the model of the British colliery chipped the seam with picks and shovels, hoisted the coal to the surface using conveyors run by steam engines, and piled it in carts that were pushed along rails to a dock for loading onto barges. Japan’s first modern coal mine was now in operation, producing the rich black rock in copious quantities and promising an improvement in Nagasaki’s economic fortunes.
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Still, the Takashima Coal Mine did not come on line soon enough to rescue Glover & Co. from a financial crisis.Although willing at first to go along with Glover’s increasingly unstable business activities, Jardine Matheson & Co. decided to suspend involvement when his inability to meet obligations became obvious. One of the Scotsman’s most urgent problems was an unpaid debt of some £PN,NNN (about XWN,NNN) to the City of Glasgow Bank, a loan taken during the construction of the warship Jho Sho Maru in Aberdeen. Glover had ordered the ship through his older brother Charles. Built in Aberdeen for the Higo (Kumamoto) Clan and delivered in April OVUN, the O,SNN-tonne corvette, renamed Ryu#jo, was Japan’s first ironclad warship and would go on to become Emperor Meiji’s flagship and the pride of the fledgling Imperial Japanese Navy. Glover turned to A.J. Bauduin, Dutch consul in Nagasaki and local agent of the Netherlands Trading Society (successor of the Dutch Factory on Dejima) for support. In May OVUN, Bauduin agreed to a loan of more than XRTN,NNN, but only on the condition that the Takashima Coal Mine be put up in its entirety as collateral. Even this substantial prop, however, failed to sustain the crumbling edifice of Glover & Co. Liquidation was deemed the only viable solution, and Glover filed for bankruptcy in the British consular court on PP August OVUN.UO Hearings held at the consulate over the following weeks revealed debts amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.The business activities of Glover & Co. were so convoluted and the list of people involved so long that it would take years to settle all the outstanding accounts. Thomas Glover’s private life was as complicated as his business activities.The Scotsman did not stay in the social confines of the foreign settlement like William Alt and other foreign residents of the time. He crossed over, associating intimately with Japanese people and acquiring not only an unusual ability in the language but also a broad understanding of Japanese customs and ways of thinking. Historical documents indicate that he also engaged in relationships with a number of Japanese women. Nagasaki historian Koga Ju#jiro reports that Glover fathered a son with a woman named Kikusono in December OVTO but that the boy died the following year.UP Kikusono was a courtesan working for Chikugo-ya, a brothel in the Maruyama entertainment quarter. Neither the circumstances of her life as Glover’s companion nor her fate after the death of the child are known.Thomas Glover
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seems to have fathered another son in September OVTS, but the identity of the mother is a mystery.The name ‘John Glover’ appears in the Nagasaki British Consulate Register of BirthsUQ but has been crossed out, indicating that the Scotsman’s second offspring also died soon after birth. On V December OVUN, soon after the collapse of his company, Thomas Glover fathered his only son to survive beyond infancy: the boy who would grow to be Kuraba Tomisaburo# (T.A.Glover). There is no mention of this birth in the above Register of Births, suggesting that Glover kept it secret, but Kuraba’s koseki (family register) preserved today at Nagasaki City Hall identifies the mother as a Japanese woman named Kaga Maki. Kuraba Tomisaburo#’s name also appears in the family register of Awajiya Tsuru, the mother of Thomas Glover’s daughter Hana born in August OVUT and the Scotsman’s common-law wife in later years. In the latter document, Tsuru is identified as the biological mother of Hana but the stepmother of Kuraba Tomisaburo#. These scraps of information in the family registers suggest that Thomas Glover was living with Kaga Maki around the time of the collapse of Glover & Co. and that Maki, like Kikusono before her, was a courtesan with whom he had established a temporary relationship.This kind of liaison had been the norm since the Dutch sojourn in the Edo Period, and, until the Japanese government sanctioned international marriage in OVUQ, it was virtually the only way for a foreign man to associate with a Japanese woman. Sometime after the demise of his company and the birth of his son, Glover parted with Maki and formed a new relationship with Awajiya Tsuru, a native of Oita Prefecture who (if later accounts are correct) had been working as a geisha in Osaka. Although the circumstances, again, are unclear, Glover apparently brought Tomisaburo# under his wing after the birth of Hana in OVUT, a time when he was preparing to leave Nagasaki for Tokyo.Thomas and Tsuru never formally married, but they remained a couple until the latter’s death in Tokyo in OVWW.UR During the nine years of its existence, Glover & Co. made exceptional contributions to the industrialization of Japan, led the way for a new generation of foreign and Japanese businesses, and helped to forge a solid basis for the growth of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Its success was intense but brief, like fireworks illuminating the night sky then quickly fading.The unfolding pieces of the company were picked up by former
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British employees who established their own enterprises and went on to become the new pillars of the foreign settlement. These included Henry Gribble, who succeeded the company’s insurance agency,Glover’s younger brothers Alexander and Alfred, who helped to administrate the affairs of the Takashima Coal Mine, and Frederick Ringer, who had been scouted by Glover in OVTS to supervise the company’s tea trade. Ringer joined with fellow Briton Edward Z. Holme to form ‘Holme Ringer & Co.’ and became sole proprietor when Holme returned to England shortly thereafter.Three Ringer family generations would expand the activities of the company over the following decades, making it Nagasaki’s foremost business enterprise and an important contributor to the economic, industrial and cultural development of the city. Nor did Thomas Glover take the blow of bankruptcy lying down or retreat from Japan in humiliation. He remained in Nagasaki until OVUT to settle his company’s outstanding debts and to watch over the Takashima Coal Mine, the fortunes of which rose in proportion to Japan’s success in promoting industrial- ization and globalization.After that he accepted a position as a consultant to the Mitsubishi Company as it expanded rapidly during the decade and split his time between Nagasaki andTokyo. He also mediated the import of minting equipment from Hong Kong and its installation at the Osaka Mint where the first ‘yen’ were produced, and he played a leading role in the establishment of the Japan Brewery Company, predecessor of Kirin Beer Company. In OWNV, the Japanese government awarded him the prestigious Second Class Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his contributions to this country. He died in Tokyo in OWOO, a legend in his time, and was buried at Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki. In January OWNQ, the following letter to the editor appeared in The Nagasaki Press, submitted by an unidentified person in response to a scholarly article about lighthouses printed earlier by the newspaper: Sir, — When reading the interesting article on ‘Some Ancient Lighthouses’ it occurred to me that probably very few people now living know who built the first modern lighthouse in Japan.The first lighthouse in Japan was built through Mr.T.B. Glover by his engineer Mr.T.Waters, on Satanomisaki, the most southerly point of Satsuma.This was followed sometime after by a lighthouse on
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Kwannonsaki built by the French engineers who constructed the Yokosuka Docks. Japan since then has made rapid strides – indeed jumps – not only in lighthouse building, but in everything else, and I am quite sure that when the true history of this country is written Mr. Glover will, or ought to, be credited with no small share in Japan’s present position in the world.Apologizing for troubling you, I am etc.,A RESIDENT.US
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AFTERTHEDEMISE of The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser and the departure of Albert Hansard in the autumn of JQOJ, Nagasaki went for several years without a regular English- language newspaper. The Nagasaki Times appeared in JQOQ but lasted for only a few months, and no copies of it can be found today.The next newspaper to roll off the presses was The Nagasaki Shipping List published twice a week from J November JQOR by Portuguese resident Antonio Loureiro, who, in the first issue, addressed his readers as follows: The difficulty attendant on keeping a written Shipping List, and of circulating Public Notices at this Port, leads us to believe that our present issue will meet with general approval, and should it be as successful as we anticipate, we trust we will be able, at no very distant date, to further increase our publication.J As it turned out Loureiro faced stiff competition from a fellow Portuguese resident named Filomeno Braga who, on JN January JQPI, launched a weekly called The Nagasaki Express using a larger and more readable type than its predecessor and quickly winning the favour of the foreign community. The Nagasaki Shipping List folded little more than a year later.
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The Nagasaki Express carried shipping information, advertise- ments, business and banking reports, church notices, articles on local and international events, letters to the editor, and lists of arriving and departing ships. In almost every issue, it brought readers up to date on news and business trends in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Amoy, Newchang, Hainan, Canton and other Chinese treaty ports, revealing the importance of the commercial network that linked the foreign settlements of Japan and China. The newspaper also delivered fearless criticism. One topic pursued relentlessly by Filomeno Braga was the duplicity of the Meiji Government in allowing the construction of churches in the foreign settlement while enforcing the archaic ban on Christianity in the Japanese community. Braga and other foreigners living in Nagasaki knew that authorities had been arresting and detaining Urakami villagers since the summer of JQOP and that plans were afoot to exile the entire Christian population to other parts of Japan, a tragedy that would be referred to later as yonban kuzure (‘fourth collapse’) in the annals of the Nagasaki Christians. Almost as though he founded the newspaper for that very purpose, Braga published reports on the uprooting and deportation of the Urakami villagers in the first issues of The Nagasaki Express: About the same time we were issuing our copy of last week, a report was current that even then more Christians were being collected and were to be deported in the steamer Elgin, then at anchor off the native town of Nagasaki. Enquiries result in, – a band of about PI men having been seen that afternoon, tied in the same manner as those already made prisoners, and supposed to be Christians, being marched through the town.A certain degree of excitement, therefore, prevailed amongst those foreigners who sympathise with these unhappy people.K Braga continued his condemnation of the anti-Christian policy of the Japanese government and the violations against the Urakami Christians. In another issue of the newspaper, he condemns the practice of fumie,L which he claims is still being practised in the hinterland, and calls on the foreign embassies in Tokyo to submit formal protests to the Japanese government: It is surprising that the Japanese should take up a position so inimical to foreigners, especially as the Treaty Powers have made provisions for punishing any of their subjects who may be convicted of wantonly damaging Eastern temples, or behaving in an unbecoming manner towards natives while engaging in their
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devotions. If the Japanese continue to act in the manner that they have done during the last eighteen months, it is the duty of the Foreign Representatives atYedo to enter a protest against it, which they could easily enforce by suspending the working of the powers given to them by their governments; as they are a great injustice to Europeans and Americans, if the native authorities are permitted to insult them with impunity.M For some two years past, the foreign consuls in Nagasaki had in fact been submitting vigorous but futile complaints to Japanese authorities regarding the mistreatment of Japanese Christians. In January JQPI, two weeks before the publication of the first issue of The Nagasaki Express, the nine consuls sent a joint letter to the governor of Nagasaki, Nomura Morihide, protesting the deportation of the Urakami villagers ‘from no other motive than because they are Christians’.The consuls conclude as follows: We do not address to you this letter with any wish to interfere with the jurisdiction which you possess over your people, but simply to beg of you in the name of humanity not to adopt any measures of persecution towards the people at Urakami for the sole reason that they are Christians – for we can assure you that such inhuman measures will be regarded with indignation by the Civilized World.N The complaints lodged by foreigners in Nagasaki reached the ears of not only the foreign representatives in Tokyo but also the general public in Europe and North America and played no small role in convincing the Meiji Government to grant freedom of religion.The flak encountered by the JQPK Iwakura mission to Europe over Japanese religious policies was probably informed to a large extent by the eyewitness accounts provided by Filomeno Braga and the demands submitted by the foreign consuls in Nagasaki. In February JQPL, the Urakami Christians were finally allowed to return to their village and to engage openly in religious activities, and the signs in Nagasaki publicizing the ban on Christianity were pulled down. The xenophobic Japanese attitude is well documented, but the opposite attitude – namely the Christian rejection of indigenous Japanese religious systems in the foreign settlement period – has received far less attention. Frustrated in their attempts to make Japanese converts and exert an impact on the local community, some British and American missionaries left the confines of the foreign settlement to parade against Buddhist and Shinto rituals.
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Nagasaki Kunchi, a harvest festival dedicated to the deities of Suwa Shinto Shrine and celebrated in Nagasaki every autumn since the middle of the seventeenth century,was marred as late as the JQQIs by abusive foreign demonstrations.O One of the reasons that missionaries took such a negative stance towards their counterparts in Japan was what they saw to be the moral laxity of the Japanese community and the failure of ‘pagan’ religions to tighten the disciplinary screws.Although it contrasts sharply with the modern image of Japanese people as scrupulous and diligent to the point of overwork, many foreigners who established companies in Japan during the early years embraced the opinion that the people of this country were fickle, lazy, and incapable of keeping promises and following schedules. The proprietors of firms like Glover & Co. and Alt & Co. complained that the Japanese calendar was so heavily dotted with holidays, festivals and family events that it was impossible to employ Japanese workers on a regular basis. In an article about Japanese sailors recruited to work on foreign ships, Filomeno Braga warned as late as JQPK that,‘Numerous complaints have been recently made by English shipmasters who have shipped Japanese as sailors. From all accounts there is considerable danger in having such crews, as no reliance can be placed in the men at times when their services are more than ever required.’P In a long editorial piece printed in his columns the following year, the Portuguese editor criticizes the indolence of Japanese people but attributes it to this country’s overly fertile soil and abundant natural resources, which he claims preclude the need for hard work, and he goes on to suggest in a rather arrogant tone that, ‘The present government of Japan may be wise and liberal, and may give the people every facility for self-improvement, but unless the Japanese people respond heartily and arouse themselves into a state of activity in accordance with the new order of things, and are prepared to take advantage of every avenue offering for useful employment or the acquisition of useful knowledge, the government might just as well have never commenced reforms.’Q Foreign dismay, or at least missionary dismay, ran deepest and strongest when it came to extramarital sexual relations. The British and American missionaries arriving in Nagasaki noted with horror that prostitution was a government-sanctioned industry here and that the crews of foreign ships and even respectable gentlemen were patronizing it freely.The disparity in
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concepts of sexuality – not to mention the two-pronged attitude of revulsion and fascination among foreigners – caused friction throughout the foreign settlement period while at the same time spawning a genre of Western art and literature exemplified by Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera Madame Butterfly. Missionaries hoping to eradicate Japan’s ‘social evil’ gave themselves a difficult task because licensed prostitution had a long tradition and the people of this country tended to view it as a natural aspect of the human condition. One of the first measures taken by the Tokugawa shogunate in the wake of the Christian era was the establishment of licensed entertainment quarters in urban centres. Promulgated in Nagasaki in JOMK, this edict resulted in the closure of brothels scattered previously throughout the town and their reopening under government supervision in the neighbourhood of Maruyama, an elevated tract of previously undeveloped land across a canal from the town centre.Three years later the shogunate granted permission for the brothel owners of Maruyama to send courtesans to the Dutch East India Company factory on Dejima.This home-delivery system was unique to Nagasaki – in Edo (Tokyo), Kyoto and Osaka the courtesans were invariably forbidden to leave the boundaries of the brothel quarters – and it issued from an eagerness on the part of the shogunate to encourage the Dutch and Chinese to spend money by the boat-load without leaving their restricted quarters or mingling unnecessarily with the native population. The system of licensed prostitution, like the strict ban on Christianity and international marriage, was still in place after the opening of Japan’s ports in JQNR, and it quickly became the target of both keen interest and passionate criticism from foreign visitors. One of the earliest to mention it was Henry ArthurTilley, a Briton serving as a language instructor on the Russian corvette Rynda which anchored here in June JQNR, shortly before the official opening of the ports for trade on J July.Tilly devotes an entire chapter of his travel journal to Nagasaki, including a vivid portrait of the Maruyama brothels: The tea-houses are situated in the upper part of the town, and confined to one or two streets. Some few are placed in gardens, laid out in Japanese style, with rocks, pools of water, mountains in miniature, dwarf cedars, and large shrubs of Camelia [sic] Japonica. The entrance to them is generally through a large gateway, inside which the first thing seen is the kitchen; on either side of this are
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raised platforms covered with mats, which form the saloons by day, and the chambers by night of the different inmates.At night the whole space is partitioned off by small folding screens, five or six feet high; or, as often may be seen, the different couples lie stretched on their mattresses promiscuously over the floor, half concealed only by a coarse green mosquito curtain.The second storey is generally reserved for the better sort of visitors, and lately, since the buildings have been open to Europeans, for their use.R The subsequent increase in the number of foreign ships arriving in Nagasaki precipitated a burst of prosperity for the brothels and bars in Maruyama but also caused a number of headaches, not the least of which was the rowdiness of the sailors visiting the entertainment quarter.Another issue that arose in the wake of the Ansei Treaties was foreign concern over the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases in the treaty ports. Soon after the opening of Nagasaki in JQNR, Russian naval surgeons insisted that the Maruyama courtesans undergo examinations for syphilis.The brothel owners refused at first, but an agreement was finally reached the following year when Dutch physician J.L.C. Pompe van Meerdervoort and his Japanese associate Matsumoto Ryo#jun arranged for the opening of a separate brothel for Russian sailors in the Inasa neighbourhood on the other side of Nagasaki Harbour and for examinations for sailors and courtesans alike.JI Similarly, British naval surgeon George Newton opened ‘lock hospitals’ in Yokohama (JQOQ) and Nagasaki (JQPI) to help protect the crews of Her Majesty’s warships from sexually transmitted diseases. The employment of courtesans was by no means confined to sailors; male residents of the foreign settlement also engaged Japanese women to live with them over extended periods of time. This included prominent merchants like Thomas Glover, who, as noted earlier, is known to have fathered a son with Kikusono, a courtesan working for the Chikugo-ya brothel in Maruyama. One reason of course was the small number ofWestern women in Nagasaki during the early years and the refusal of the Japanese government to recognize international marriage until JQPL (a date that interestingly coincides with the granting of religious freedom).The practice of keeping Japanese women as sexual companions nevertheless became so commonplace that it garnered the snide nickname ‘Japanese marriage’ among foreign observers. During his JQOI visit, George Smith, the bishop of
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Hong Kong, observed that illicit sex was rampant in Nagasaki, even among the young Europeans and Americans attending the first religious services he held here. He did not miss the opportunity to mention this in his book TenWeeks in Japan or to point a damning finger at Nagasaki: There were present in the congregation not a few young men, trained amid the healthy influences of a Christian home, cast adrift upon the untried moral dangers of an isolated foreign settlement in a pagan land, wandering as sheep without a shepherd in the wilderness, and placed in imminent danger of making shipwreck of their souls.The Japanese system of licensed brothels as a source of revenue to the government, and the sad undermining of moral principle caused by the facilities of concubinage with native women, have (it is to be feared) combined in producing among a considerable portion of the foreign community a state of dissoluteness exceeded in no part of the East.JJ Unable to eradicate the practice of ‘Japanese marriage’ or to harness Japanese society with Euro-American values, the missionaries turned their attention to the offspring of illicit interracial encounters, children who, as half-Caucasian, were deemed Christian by default. In JQPJ, one American women’s group established a home for children of mixed parentage, stating their purpose and calling for donations in the English-language newspapers: A subject of deep importance, but one which public journalists are slow to take up, has long obtruded itself upon general notice.We allude to the children of foreign fathers and Japanese mothers, who have become very numerous in the foreign settlements of Japan. The question now forces itself upon us, more and more strongly, what is to become of these children? Are they to be allowed to grow up as heathen among the Japanese? Or, shall they be taken from the mothers and taught the truths of Christianity? Doubtless every father of such little ones must desire that his offspring not be given over to superstition and idolatry; and yet this is all they are likely to learn from their mothers or from their maternal relatives and friends.JK However, the foreign men engaged in common-law arrangements with Japanese women remained as impervious to condemnation from purists as they were geographically detached from the social constraints of Europe. In response to the above report, an anonymous contributor to The Nagasaki Express, whom
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the editor refers to as ‘a very respectable resident’, attributes the custom of keeping a temporary Japanese wife to economic factors: In regard to these putative fathers, it is a charity to assume in their behalf that they are not led into this licentiousness from natural moral obliquity, but solely from its cheapness; and for this consideration alone they endure its nastiness.They would not practise it at home, not only from the sacred influences of mother and sisters, as well as the more practical ones of public opinion, but also because it is vastly more expensive … It is not impossible eventually that the aspirations of those who have lived in this state may reach the height of endeavouring to marry one of their own colour, education, and religion – but what refined, educated, and virtuous woman would knowingly consent to occupy the place that had been previously equipped with a moosmie’s greasy pillow, and what security would the father of legitimate white children have, that they would be free from the contamination of disease absorbed by his system in his intercourse with the foulest women on the foot-stool, who it is well known invariably require a Japanese lover in addition to their acknowledged protectors!JL This testimonial elicited an angry letter to the editor, published in the next issue of the newspaper under the pseudonym ‘Minerva’: I cannot refrain from addressing you, to record my protest against your allowing the anonymous letter to appear in your last issue. Although the letter is weak and rambling, my object is, neither to raise a controversy nor to prevent the subject it treats upon from being discussed, provided it is conducted in a decorous manner. My sole object is to protest against your indiscretion in giving facilities to anyone to make use of such obscene language as that contained in the letter I complain of … In conclusion, I would add that your journal finds its way into the hands of ladies, who scarcely can do otherwise than wonder how the writer of last week’s letter acquired his unenviable knowledge of the minute but questionable details he gives.JM The outcry from foreign residents like Minerva and the pressure brought to bear on Japan as a new ‘civilized nation’ soon effected a change in Japan’s traditional system of licensed prostitution. In October JQPK, the Meiji Government issued a proclamation ordering the emancipation of girls and women held in bondage and nullifying the debts incurred by their parents. The result of the proclamation was reported shortly thereafter in The Nagasaki Express:
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On Tuesday last, the institutions in the town of Nagasaki at Maruyama known as ‘The Tea Houses’ were cleared of their occupants and closed by order of the local authorities, in conformity with the instructions they received fromYedo by the steamer New York on Sunday last.The inmates, we hear, were not slow in availing themselves of the new emancipation act which enabled them to obtain their freedom.JN The government decree sent shockwaves through the entertainment quarter, where a profitable industry suddenly lost is prime resource, but it certainly did not bring an end to prostitution.The Maruyama brothels responded to the decree by transforming into ‘rental parlours’ and by employing women outside the former system of bondage.The government not only sanctioned this innovation but also gleaned revenue from it by demanding the purchase of expensive licences for both prostitutes and geisha (women engaged exclusively as entertainers). Again the foreign response is reflected on the pages of The Nagasaki Express: The anticipations formed by nearly everyone when they heard of the good intentions of the government to discontinue making the ‘Tea Houses’ contribute anything in the shape of revenue, have been considerably shaken during the week, by the announcement that these establishments will be continued on what may be termed a voluntary system.The inmates are to be free from control, but they are all to be subject to a licensing fee ranging J from SJ ⁄K, up to SK per month for the singing girls. However much a government might be disposed to connive at their existence, it would be much better for them to ignore them altogether, by refusing to accept any such filthy lucre as revenue from any such disreputable sources.JO As indicated by this expression of dismay from Filomeno Braga in The Nagasaki Express, the official edict neither eradicated prostitution nor satisfied the demands of foreign observers. In the end it was the economic impact that eclipsed other concerns.A widespread cottage industry sprang up around the sex trade after the abolition of brothel slavery in Nagasaki, and, much to the chagrin of missionaries, the custom of ‘Japanese marriage’ monopolized previously by brothel owners became a source of easy money for any parent willing to peddle a teenage daughter’s sexual charm. Ironically enough, it was the financial clout of the foreign community that assured both the downfall of the old system of prostitution and its continuation in a different form. As if the indigenous system of prostitution were not enough,
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the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement suffered from a stubborn moral eyesore within its own boundaries, namely the ‘grog shops’ that lined the banks of O¯ ura Creek and catered to the crews of naval vessels and merchant ships.The majority were single-storey hovels with names like ‘Man at the Wheel’, ‘Snug Inn’ and ‘Free and Easy’, equipped with little more than a bar and a few tables where sailors used hard liquor to blur the boredom and frustration of months at sea. The reverie indoors often deteriorated into drunken brawls that spilled out onto the streets and sent more than a few ‘blue-jackets’ to the local hospital and cemetery. The underworld of O¯ ura Creek also served as a hotbed for illegal prostitution and the diseases that accompanied it, only underlining concerns about hygiene and cementing Nagasaki’s unsavoury reputation abroad.The problem came to a head in the spring of JQQL when British Minister Sir Harry Parkes asked the acting consul in Nagasaki, John C. Hall, to conduct a thorough investigation. In a letter to the minister, Hall reports the existence of twenty-two foreign-run public houses in the settlement and states that,‘of this number only five are hotels at which board and lodging for travellers is procurable, and of this five only two are fit for respectable people to stop at. The other twenty houses therefore consist of three low class hotels so-called and seventeen grog shops or taverns.’ Hall goes on to report that at least ten of the grog shops are notorious dens of prostitution, and he saves particularly severe comments for an establishment called the ‘Gaiety’ owned by American merchant George Lake: At one of the grog shops, the ‘Gaiety’ owned nominally by the American Lake but in reality run by Japanese who use his name as a shelter against police surveillance, women and liquor are said to be supplied at rates so low as to be almost ruinous to others in the trade. In this establishment, over forty blue-jackets in one night have been known to sleep with unlicensed women. As only licensed public women are subject to medical inspection, there is evidently some foundation for the opinion of the naval doctors as to the main source of the venereal diseases that so scourge the crews of Her Majesty’s ships. And I must remark that as the mercantile shipping of this port is about quadruple the naval shipping the havoc made by these diseases amongst the merchant seamen must be much more considerable.JP At the end of the report, Hall makes a number of suggestions for a solution to the problem, such as the reinstatement of the foreign settlement’s Municipal Council, which had been abolished in
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JQPO, and the issuing of search warrants to allow the Japanese police to enter the grog shops and arrest offenders. The consul seems to sigh when he says that the demands of local merchants who depend on the visits of foreign ships eclipse the will of Japanese police to protect foreign sailors from disease. In the end, he cites the example of a British admiral who circumvented the problem by urging his crew to avoid the grog shops in the foreign settlement and to patronize the licensed brothels in the Japanese town where ‘clean, healthy women are to be had’. Soon after submitting the above report, John C. Hall and the other foreign consuls in Nagasaki granted the Japanese police permission, for a period of three months, to crack down on illegal activities in the ‘grog shops’. This decision was controversial because it expressed a willingness to relinquish the legal immunity guaranteed by the Ansei Treaties and could lead to a more general invasion of privacy in the foreign settlement. One of the most articulate critics was Arthur Norman, British editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki ExpressJQ who used his columns to condemn the search warrant and all other concessions that might allow interference in the activities of foreigners. Only a few weeks later, Norman found himself in the eye of the storm after refusing to cooperate with a policeman who arrived unannounced at his house to gather information about Japanese employees. The police filed a complaint at the British Consulate, and John C. Hall ordered Norman to appear before the consular court on charges of obstructing justice. Norman insisted that he had simply exercised his legal rights under the rule of extra- territoriality, but Hall demanded that Norman give his full cooperation to the police and, in a written pronouncement, warned that if ‘he neglects or refuses to obey this order, then it is adjudged that the defendant, for such his disobedience, be imprisoned in Her Majesty’s Consulate prison, at Nagasaki, there to be kept for the space of three months, unless the said order be sooner obeyed’.JR Norman immediately filed a protest, pointing out that: With regard to the matter, I wish to again state, as was proved in H.M.’s Consular Court yesterday, that I have never at any time unlawfully and willfully obstructed the Japanese police whilst in the execution of their legitimate duties; but that I have always been, and am still, prepared to volunteer any reasonable information required by the Japanese authorities with regard to their subjects in
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my employ. On these grounds, and taking the whole of the circumstances into consideration, I do most emphatically protest against the order which places myself, my servants, and my property at the utter mercy of officials whose jurisdiction and legal right over me and mine, in the slightest degree, I repudiate.KI Discussion of the issue in the newspaper ended there, indicating that Hall desisted from pursuing it any further, acknowledging that as long as foreigners enjoyed the privilege of extraterritoriality then Norman’s plea was legally sound.The editor took a last jab at the British consul by comparing the latter’s court order to ‘the famous Irish verdict:“We find the prisoner not guilty, My Lord, but we strongly recommend him not to do it again.”’KJ Extraterritoriality may have provided foreigners with a sense of safety from the murky world of Oriental justice, but it sowed seeds of suspicion and dissatisfaction among the Japanese community because, even if the consul trying a mixed case strove to be impartial, his decision was bound to be viewed as biased if it fell in favour of the foreign accuser or accused. Some historians assert that the verdicts handed down during the foreign settlement period were inherently prejudiced; others insist that, considering the circumstances and the lack of expert legal knowledge among the consuls, they were remarkably fair and compassionate.KK The majority of cases undoubtedly fell some- where in between, but the following, reported in detail in the archives of the Nagasaki British Consulate, rallies behind the prejudice theory: On LI September JQPM, Her Britannic Majesty’s Court at Nagasaki presided by Consul Marcus Flowers heard the case of ‘The Queen, at the instance of the Japanese Government against James Collington’, the charge being that Collington ‘did on the Lrd day of May last create a disturbance in the house of one Japanese named Oda Jokichi, unlawfully took therefrom a knife, resisted the Japanese police when arresting him, and threatened them with said knife’.KL The consul’s report on the trial and its conclusion runs for nineteen pages and includes statements from a Japanese woman namedYei as well as Oda Jokichi and several of his servants, two policemen, and the defendant, James Collington, a sailor on the British man-of-war HMS Iron Duke. Collington was accused of entering the Oda family house by the rear door, molestingYei (a servant at the house) after she emerged naked from the bath, assaulting two
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other servants who caught him in the act, seizing a knife in the kitchen and using it to scare off the servants as he made his escape, and then resisting the Japanese police who pursued and arrested him in Motokago-machi, where again he allegedly pulled out the knife and wielded it in a menacing manner.The British sailor stated that he had imbibed liquor at a grog shop in O¯ ura called ‘The St Petersburg’ and that he had no memory of his actions between his departure from the grog shop and his arrest, but he denied the accusation of violence, saying,‘As for drawing a knife, or striking the police, I did not do it.’ The Japanese witnesses testified unanimously that Collington had in fact seized and wielded the knife, and both of the policemen who arrested him stated that, in an act of self-defence, they had struck him on the legs with their batons and forced him onto the ground, at which point they took away the knife, handcuffed him, and conveyed him to the police station on a rickshaw. Gerard Irvine, surgeon on the HMS Iron Duke, told the court that Collington had suffered a broken knee in the scuffle, an injury so severe that he was ‘maimed for life’ and after returning to Britain would ‘have to be discharged from the navy without any pension’. After all the testimony had been aired, Marcus Flowers delivered the following decision:‘The Court considers the charge of assault and causing a disturbance proved, and fines prisoner three dollars and costs.The charge of drawing a knife, the Court considers not proved to its satisfaction.’ In other words, with regard to the far more serious crimes of attempted rape and intimidation with a deadly weapon, the sworn testimony of two Japanese policemen corroborated unwaveringly by several eyewitnesses was deemed less reliable, or at least no more reliable, than the claim of a drunken British sailor with a broken knee. As long as the foreign settlement existed as an official entity, Japanese police trying to enforce the laws of their country and foreigners insisting on their legal immunity were bound to collide. The ban on opium was one law about which Japanese authorities were particularly and understandably adamant, having seen the political, financial and moral damage that the drug caused in China. In March JQPN, the police entered the tea-firing godown of Maltby & Co. at No. KL O¯ ura and arrested a Chinese worker who had been found smoking opium on the premises. John Maltby, the British owner of the company, wrote a letter to Consul Marcus Flowers complaining about the violation of treaty regulations:
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While we have no desire to screen the man from the consequences of his alleged misconduct, we cannot admit the right of the Japanese to enter our premises under such circumstances without first obtaining our sanction or your authority, believing as we do that they have not only exceeded their duty but have also committed an illegal act. Should you endorse our views, we have no doubt you will take prompt measures to procure the immediate release of the Chinaman in question.We may remark that the detention of our servant is tantamount to a stoppage to our business, and if such a course is to be allowed, no establishment is safe from the periodical visits of the native police.KM
The following day, Flowers dutifully related the complaint to the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture, requesting that the servant be allowed to return to his work immediately and that the two arresting policemen be reprimanded for their ‘indiscretion’ and be warned ‘against committing a similar offence’. The governor, Miyagawa Fusayuki, responded two days later, explaining that the police had mistaken the Chinese worker for the owner of the tea- firing godown and, since Chinese did not enjoy extraterritorial rights, they had felt no compunctions in arresting him. ‘I shall admonish the police for their reprehensible conduct and I shall cause the Chinaman Hotokwan to be sent back to Messrs Maltby & Co.,’assured the governor. In the next sentence, however, he changes tack: ‘But as smoking opium is strictly forbidden in Japan and must be examined into and punished, I have the honour to address you afresh on this subject, and request you will inform Messrs Maltby & Co. to deliver him up.’ Soon after this exchange, John Maltby wrote to the consul reporting that the Chinese servant had been released, only to be arrested again, and he requested assistance in gaining the man’s discharge as soon as possible. However, the trial went ahead regardless of the British demands, and Maltby learned later that the servant had been convicted and sentenced to eighteen months hard labour at the Takashima Coal Mine. In response to this news, Marcus Flowers wrote once again to the Nagasaki authorities, submitting a protest regarding his exclusion from the judicial process and a request for leniency for the Chinese servant. The next letter in the correspondence file is a note to Flowers from the Nagasaki Prefecture Chief Justice, who explains that he had not informed the British consul about the sentence because ‘when [the convict] was handed over to me from the Kencho I
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was not informed that he was a servant of Mr. Maltby, nor did he himself state so’.The Chief Justice did not, however, show any inclination to reduce the sentence, and the case rested there. The issue of opium use, and the aggressive methods adopted by Japanese police in curbing it, turned into an international commotion in September JQQL when a seventeen-year-old Chinese youth named Wai Egno was killed by police in the Shinchi neighbourhood of the foreign settlement. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express editor Arthur Norman was again on the scene, reporting the incident in detail in his newspaper and condemning what he considered the illegal actions of the police.KN According to his report,Wai had been sent by his uncle to pay a bill at the Chinese store at No. KM Shinchi but found the proprietor lying on a couch and smoking opium.Wai was invited to lie down beside the proprietor and join in conversation, but he had no sooner done so than two Japanese detectives in plain clothes and four policemen in uniform rushed into the store. Ignoring the protests of the proprietor, the police seized the opium-smoking apparatus and launched a search for hidden stocks of the drug.They also confiscated the money brought by Wai.When the two Chinese tried to resist, the police forced the proprietor to lie face down on the floor and apparently stabbed Wai in the chest and back as he fled from the building. Several witnesses corroborated this account, saying that they had seen the policemen standing over the wounded youth with their swords drawn.Wai was carried to the government hospital for treatment but died in the middle of the night from loss of blood. Great excitement and consternation ensued among the Chinese community, which numbered several hundred people at the time, and a meeting of prominent Chinese residents was hurriedly convened to pass resolutions calling for a formal protest from the Chinese consul in Nagasaki over the violation of international treaties and the carrying of deadly weapons by the police.Arthur Norman chipped in with the following comment: If the police are allowed to continue wearing swords, there is no telling which, or how many, of us may sooner or later share Wai Egno’s fate. It may not be on account of opium; — a quarrel with a jinrikisha coolie who demands an exorbitant fare, or is insulting; an altercation with a tide-waiter, about launching a canoe; or a score of other things may lead to the intervention of the police and the drawing of swords. In that case there will be no alternative
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but for European and Chinese to return to the precautionary custom that used to be in vogue in the ‘good old times,’ and go about, both on pleasure and on business, with one’s finger on the trigger of a ‘six-shooter’ in the right-hand side-pocket. A month later, when little progress had been made in answering the demands of the Chinese community and bringing the guilty policemen to justice, Norman’s rhetoric took on an angry tone: The Minister for Foreign Affairs gives instructions to the Governor which are in direct contradiction to the Treaty, the Governor hands them down to the Superintendent of police, who carries them out, with the result that an innocent man is murdered in his friend’s house, and three other friends are wounded. A demand is made for satisfaction, and the police throw the blame on the Superintendent, the Superintendent upon the Governor, the Governor upon the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and that is the last of it, unless the injured nationality is prepared to declare war. This is Japanese justice! This is the way that law is administered in a country that is striving with all its might to have residents of all nationalities under its jurisdiction!! Surely they are frustrating their own ends.KO Conflicting evidence and contradictory declarations slowed the investigation, but the trial of the Japanese detectives and policemen commenced the following month,Arthur Norman reporting gleefully around the same time that the policemen on duty in the foreign settlement were wearing batons instead of swords.KP Blame for the murder of Wai Egno eventually focused on one of the plain-clothes detectives who was charged with illegal entry and murder and found guilty on KK December the same year. The tension simmering between the Chinese and Japanese communities in the wake of the above incident took a violent and unexpected twist on a hot summer evening in JQQO when hundreds of Chinese sailors rioted on the backstreets of Nagasaki, causing damage and injury on a scale never before witnessed in the port. Four Chinese warships had arrived in Nagasaki on JJ August JQQO to undergo cleaning and painting at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. On the evening of the JLth, a small group of Chinese sailors, emboldened by alcohol, injured a Japanese policeman after causing a disturbance in the Maruyama entertainment district.
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The offending sailors were arrested and turned over to the Chinese consul.Two days later, however, some MII Chinese sailors came ashore en masse and, after imbibing liquor in the Chinese bars in Hirobaba, went on a rampage through the neighbour- hoods of Kago-machi and Funadaiku-machi, wielding swords and sticks and proceeding to the police station where their compatriots had supposedly been mistreated. Japanese police created a blockade by piling up a number of rickshaws on the street, but the sailors broke through, and both groups suffered serious injuries in the ensuing fight.The riot only subsided when the Chinese sailors retreated to Umegasaki amid a shower of roof tiles and stones hurled by infuriated Japanese residents.According to the report published in The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, the injured were carried to the government hospital, quickly overwhelming its facilities, while the remaining sailors were arrested and marched to the Chinese Consulate at No. P O¯ ura to await the decision of the Chinese authorities.KQ When the smoke cleared and damages were assessed, it was found that two Japanese policemen had died, one on the street and the other in hospital, and that another twenty-nine had suffered injuries of varying severity. The death toll on the Chinese side included one officer and seven sailors, while forty- two sailors had suffered injuries.KR The subsequent investigation into the incident, referred to later as the ‘Nagasaki Affair’, escalated into a rift between the governments of Japan and China. Reported widely, it also convinced most Japanese that extra- territoriality and other special privileges enjoyed by foreigners had to be abolished as soon as possible. It is probably no coincidence that the negotiations for a revision of the treaties between the Japanese government and its foreign counterparts gained momentum around this same time. Only two years later did the Japanese and Chinese governments finally reach a settle- ment, both sides agreeing to pay an indemnity to the families of the dead and to punish guilty parties according to their respective legal systems. The negotiations were still dragging on in February JQQP when reports of another disturbance caused by drunken sailors danced across the pages of Nagasaki newspapers.This time, the culprits were Russian sailors who visited a brothel in the Inasa neighbourhood and, after drinking too much saké, proceeded to destroy furniture, tear the clothes of Japanese women, and to
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assault any Japanese person who got in their way. One of the sailors suffered a stab wound in the scuffle, and thirteen Japanese were taken to the police station on various charges.LI Since the JQNIs, when Admiral Evfimii Putiatin visited Nagasaki and received permission to rest at Goshinji Temple, the Russian Navy had made the Inasa neighbourhood on the opposite side of Nagasaki Harbour a regular haunt.While British, American and French sailors frequented the bars along O¯ ura Creek or ventured into the Maruyama entertainment district, the Russian sailors came ashore at Inasa and patronized the brothels, bars and souvenir shops here, exerting such an impact that it came to be called the ‘Russian Quarter’. The Inasa brothels were situated in thought-provoking proximity to the Russian naval cemetery at Goshinji, but they never fell short of customers or the headaches inevitably caused thereby. Despite all the efforts of the foreign consuls and missionaries, the problem of prostitution, the sleazy underworld of grog shops in the foreign settlement, and the poor behaviour of sailors and vagabonds continued to bolster Nagasaki’s reputation as a ‘second Corinth’.The following comment, published in August JQQP, indicates the stubborn persistence of the controversy and the social tensions dividing the well-to-do and not-so-well-to-do factions of the foreign community: The Sagarimatsu side of the O¯ ura Creek, the buildings on which, from the Customs House to the native town, with one solitary exception, consist of grog-shops from one end to the other, has for years past been a standing disgrace to the otherwise peaceful and respectful foreign settlement of Nagasaki; and as time rolls on matters in that particular quarter are by no means improving … There are undoubtedly a few, — a very few, — [grog shop proprietors] who for a long time have conducted themselves in such a manner that, all things considered, not a word can be said against them, and their reputation for peace-abiding citizens is thoroughly established. But, on the other hand, it is equally undeniable that there are amongst them quite a number who, under proper government, would long ere this have been forced into reformation or relegated to life service in a chain-gang, — most probably the latter! Drinking, fighting, and every other description of debauchery,day and night, seem to be the height of their ambition, and the only thing they live for. Breaking one another’s heads with bottles and clubs, thus disfiguring each other for life, seems to be looked upon as a gentle pastime; and if the
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present mild way of treating such offences is continued they will soon become of daily occurrence. So far as this class of pariahs themselves are concerned, it might perhaps be almost as well to let them follow the reported example of certain cats of Kilkenny,who fought until nothing remained of them but their toe-nails and a tuft of hair; but the process would be a very long one and very demoralizing to others while it lasted.LJ The question of the grog shops and the eyesore they created in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement remained mostly unsolved over the following years, despite the many expressions of concern from consular and naval authorities and the efforts of missionaries to divert sailors from the siren-song of alcohol and illicit sex by opening rest homes and reading rooms near the waterfront. Whether it was the confessional in the Catholic church, the Protestant mission rest home, or the grog shop teetering on the bank of O¯ ura Creek, the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement continued to serve as a cushion for the seamen bumped from one port to another on the rising tides of Euro-American involvement in East Asia in the latter half of the nineteenth century.
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Life, Work and Recreation
THERESIDENTSOF the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement shared water, food and fuel with the Japanese population but seldom ventured across the divide, preferring to enjoy the boon of privacy and self-determination guaranteed by extraterritoriality and to linger in the comfortable limbo of transplanted Euro- American culture.All international trade and communication was mediated in the settlement, a virtual monopoly that provided financial opportunities so lucrative that many foreign residents were able to live like nobility, leaving daily chores to teams of servants and amassing fortunes in a few short years. Most of the major trading companies that originally chose Nagasaki as a business base moved toYokohama or Kobe by ELKD, leaving this port out of the inner circle of Japanese politics, commerce and industry, but Nagasaki continued to serve as Japan’s western gate- way to the continent, as a secure link in maritime transportation routes, and as a receptacle of Western influence in East Asia. Widened and reinforced in the ELJDs, the waterfront street in O¯ ura was now referred to as the ‘Bund’, an Anglo-Indian appellation coined in Bombay. A row of fine buildings erected in quasi-Western style faced the harbour as though waiting with
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open arms for the arrival of ships from abroad. The hillsides were checkered with houses of similar construction inhabited by a growing number of foreign women and children who by their very presence helped to rectify the Wild West atmosphere of earlier days. Other terms born from the meeting of English and Asian languages – like chit, tiffin, punch, pajama, coolie, amah, sampan, rickshaw, godown and bungalow – had also been adopted into the vernacular of the foreign settlement, allowing the people who used them to revel in a sense of exotic adventure and to draw a distinction between themselves and their compatriots leading a dull existence ‘back home’. A full array of Western social and religious customs graced the calendar, English and French conversation echoed on street corners, and shopkeepers put out signs and published notices in the same style as those popular in Liverpool and San Francisco. The Chinese community in Shinchi also constructed a neighbourhood scattered with reminders of home and celebrated traditional anniversaries such as the Lantern Festival and Birthday of Confucius, their distinctive music and ornaments adding further ingredients to the cultural hotch-potch. Since the European element was predominantly British, the experience of British residents in the outposts of the British Empire weighed heavily in the design, culture and attitudes of the foreign settlements in Japan. These settlements repeated the pattern of the ‘concession’ at the waterfront of a faraway port, with an utterly foreign culture in the background and hordes of ‘natives’ treated as a useful market and source of labour but kept at a polite distance. Despite the strong scent of colonialism, however, the treaty ports of Japan differed from Johannesburg, Malacca, Hong Kong and Vancouver in that the host nation used the foreign settlements as a stepping-stone to its own modernization and autonomy. Indeed, the peaceful development of the foreign settlements and promotion of international cooperation – not to mention the overwhelming cooperation achieved among the Japanese population – were important conditions for Japan’s success in renovating itself on Western social, industrial and military models. In the early ELKDs, the government banned the wearing of swords and commanded men to cut their chonmage topknots and adopt Western hairstyles, decisions that sharply reduced the danger of murder on the back streets and the sense of cultural disparity between the Japanese and foreign communities.The government
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also jettisoned obsolete feudal luggage such as the lunar calendar and the law against the private ownership of land, inaugurated a postal service and joined the International Postal Union, founded the Osaka Mint and created a currency on the Western model, opened national universities that emulated the best universities of Europe, supported the launching of the first daily newspaper (the Tokyo Nichinichi Shimbun), established a European-style army and navy and initiated national conscription, subsidized the develop- ment of mining, shipbuilding and transportation industries and engaged troops of foreign experts to serve as advisers, and passed legislation for a Western-style school system and a string of national banks. One measure that directly involved Nagasaki was the laying of sea-bottom telegraph cables between this port and the continent. In ELJL, the Russian government invited tenders for a contract to lay cables connecting Russia with China, Japan and Hong Kong. The Great Northern Telegraph Company of Denmark won the contract and set up a subsidiary firm, the Great Northern China and Japan Extension Company, to carry out the work.The Meiji Government guaranteed access to Nagasaki and allowed the company to manage the cables between Japan and the continent, its lack of financial leverage, political savvy and technological capability in the early years of the Meiji Period leaving it little choice but to follow the imperatives spelled out by foreign interests. The Great Northern China and Japan Extension Company laid cables fromVladivostok to Nagasaki, Shanghai and Hong Kong, a distance of F,GDD nautical miles, and established a station in the BelleVue Hotel at No. EE Minamiyamate.This hotel was Nagasaki’s best accommodation at the time, an imposing two-storey structure standing at the tree-clad foot of the Minamiyamate hillside, near the customs jetty where foreign visitors came ashore. Japan’s first overseas telegraph service began on EF August ELKE with a notice in The Nagasaki Express telling readers that the company was ‘prepared to forward telegrams from the station at this port to all parts of the world in telegraphic communication’.E In ELKH, the Great Northern Telegraph Company established its Nagasaki headquarters in a new Western-style building at No. F Umegasaki and became one of the pillars of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, while at the same time clutching the aortic artery of international telecommunications in Japan.
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By the time the dits and dahs of Morse code emanated from the Belle Vue Hotel, the foreign settlement had become an established section of the Nagasaki mosaic where foreign residents could live peacefully in well-appointed houses and obtain most of their basic necessities. Fresh water was available from wells in the foreign settlement, some recently dug, others remaining from the days when the O¯ ura district was a rural suburb of Nagasaki. Butcher shops established at the southern edge of the settlement in Sagarimatsu provided beef and pork, while fresh vegetables, fish, chicken, eggs and milk arrived on carts pulled by Japanese vendors, and an assortment of imported foods and condiments decorated the shelves of foreign-run stores. The bakery at No. ED Umegasaki run by Frenchmen J. Briffaut and A. Salvery produced breads and pastries suited to the tastes of various nationalities, and Jean Couder welcomed visitors to his Restaurant Français and provided ‘provisions and wines and liquors of the best quality only’.The ‘Medical Hall and Aerated Water Manufactory’ run by the Briton William Jalland kept a good stock of imported medicines and pharmaceutical items and responded quickly to orders for bottled sarsaparilla and other soft drinks. Typical European services were also readily available.Arthur Navarra was on hand to tune pianos, and the Gordes brothers operated a photography studio in Umegasaki where residents and visitors could capture images of themselves in cabinet photographs. Mrs Benjamin placed an advertisement in the English-language newspaper asking ‘ladies desirous of having dresses made for themselves and children, in the latest styles’ to kindly favour her with their orders. James Goodchild, proprietor of the ‘Eureka Hairdressing Saloon’, also assured readers of the newspaper that he would ‘continue to give every satisfaction, by strict attention to the wants of those that may give me a call’. Everyday drudgery, meanwhile, was borne by troops of faithful, low-paid Japanese employees, many of whom stayed on for decades. Servants cleaned house, prepared meals in separate kitchens, managed gardens, attended to children, and even carried away bedpans left in toilets. Laundrymen came regularly to collect soiled laundry and sheets and carried these to the upper reaches of O¯ ura Creek where cleaning shops clustered around a communal well and answered the demand from both foreign residents and visiting ships.
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Foreign residents led a comfortable life of their own design, but their efforts to stay surrounded by the familiar scenes and flavours of home exposed the sense of isolation and homesickness that dogged their existence throughout the foreign settlement period. Even after the completion of the Suez Canal in ELJM, steamships took about two months to travel from Nagasaki to the ports of Western Europe, and until the completion of transcontinental railways in the United States and Canada in ELJM and ELLI, respectively, the Rocky Mountains and vast empty expanses of North America blocked the passage home. Furthermore, foreign residents of Nagasaki were confined to the relatively small space of the settlement, especially during the early years after the opening of the port.They had to obtain permission from Japanese authorities to travel out to islands in Nagasaki Harbour to hold picnics, to make excursions on horseback to the surround- ing countryside, and to travel to the hot springs at Obama and Unzen for therapeutic retreats. Health and hygiene were of course issues of the utmost importance, especially when the Japanese government hospital staffed by one or two Dutch physicians and their Japanese students was the only Western-style medical facility and when cholera, typhoid fever and other infectious diseases lurked in the gutters and drains. Physicians and dentists with private practices in Shanghai and other centres paid occasional visits to Nagasaki, renting rooms in the Belle Vue Hotel and inviting foreign residents to make appointments for treatment through the medium of advertisements in the English-language newspapers. Some foreign physicians came to Nagasaki in other positions such as consular officials and provided medical care on a freelance basis. The Nagasaki Hong List and Directory for the year ELKF lists four medical doctors: W.K.M. van Leeuwen van Duivenbode and A.J.C. Geerts of the Japanese Government Hospital, C.L. Fisher who was serving as American vice consul, and Briton James N. Forrest who opened a private practice in the Higashiyamate neighbourhood.F Foreign residents eased the tedium of isolation and maintained good health by engaging in a variety of sports and recreational activities. One of the first was bowling. In ELJE, an enterprising British resident named Henry Gibson opened the ‘International Bowling Saloon’ in the Hirobaba neighbourhood. This is recognized today as Japan’s first bowling lane, but the exact
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location remains unknown because it emerged in the period before the official allocation of lots in the foreign settlement. Indeed, it may have been forgotten altogether if not for the following advertisement that Gibson took out in The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser: The undersigned respectfully begs leave to inform the Community that his bowling saloon is now open for the reception of visitors. A fresh supply of the best description of Wines, Spirits, &c., &c., will be sold at very moderate prices.The Proprietor trusts that by strict attention to business he will merit and receive a portion of the Patronage. HENRY GIBSON. Nagasaki, FFnd June, ELJE.G In view of the cramped conditions in Hirobaba and the traditional Japanese style of the buildings there – not to mention the appetite of foreign residents for ‘Wines, Spirits, &c., &c.’ – Gibson probably placed more emphasis on ‘saloon’ than on ‘bowling’. In any case, bowling lanes subsequently became a fixture in the hotels constructed in the settlement, and the sport gained such popularity that the ‘Nagasaki Bowling Club’ was later established at No. ED A Minamiyamate – at the bottom of the path leading up to O¯ ura Catholic Church – and served for many years as a social institution. The significance of the sport in the foreign community is illustrated by a song composed by one of Nagasaki’s bowling enthusiasts: Talk of your walks in the early morn, The hue of health your cheeks to adorn. Give me the game of bowls at night: That is what makes a man of might! Bowls, bowls beautiful bowls! A fine old game for weary souls Bowls, beer, and a pipe o’ baccy, The best of fun in Nagasaki! Some like tennis on T.B.’s court, Good for girls in petticoats short! But the pins for me in a solid block And I knock them over like one o’clock! Bowls, bowls beautiful bowls! A fine old game for weary souls Bowls, beer, and a pipe o’ baccy, The best of fun in Nagasaki!
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Yes,give me the clatter of oak pins ten, There’s stingo in it for lusty men! ‘Double’! ‘Single’! ‘ten on the role’! That’s the game! Upon my soul! Bowls, bowls beautiful bowls! A fine old game for weary souls Bowls, beer, and a pipe o’ baccy, The best of fun in Nagasaki!H The words ‘T.B.’s court’ in the second verse refer to the tennis lawn built by Thomas Glover on the hillside near his house. The spacious dimensions of Glover’s property and the other lots in Minamiyamate allowed the owners to build Japan’s first flat lawns and to use them, not only for tennis matches, but also for outdoor concerts, luncheons, wedding parties, and other social gatherings. A group of foreign wives even formed the ‘Ladies Lawn Tennis Club’ and arranged for regular matches followed by tea and sandwiches at outdoor tables. Croquet was another imported game that appeared on the lawns of the foreign settlement for the first time in Japan. Young male residents meanwhile made use of vacant lots in the settlement to play football or retired to one of the hotels to test their skill at billiards and snooker. Other foreign ‘sportsmen’ took their shotguns out to surrounding forests and pastures and converted pheasants into trophies to decorate the mantels of the foreign settlement. Needless to say, all of these activities attracted great wonderment and curiosity among Japanese people who happened to be observers. Still another popular activity pursued by the foreign residents of Nagasaki throughout the foreign settlement period was boat racing in Nagasaki Harbour, the calmness of which provided an ideal setting for this traditional European sport. Every year in spring, the foreign residents gathered along with the crews of visiting ships for a day-long regatta, forming teams that participated in various events and vied for cash prizes and a championship cup. The Nagasaki Racing and Athletic Committee, which oversaw these events, built a Western-style boat house on the shore south of the foreign settlement where spectators could watch the races from a wide second-floor veranda.The rowers and sailors seem to have been entirely male, the women preferring to stay in the boat house and view the races from the veranda where they could keep their hems dry and hair in place.At the ‘Nagasaki Regatta’ of FJ April ELKE, which
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was reported in detail in The Nagasaki Express, the programme included races for yachts over seven tonnes, sailing boats, ships’ cutters and canoes.A now thirty-two-year-old Thomas Glover placed second in the canoe race, giving up the NED prize to the winner, Maltby & Co.’s warehouse-keeper J.A. Repenn. From the earliest days of the foreign settlement, foreign residents also kept themselves entertained with a series of musical performances, plays and magic shows.These were received so enthusiastically and served such an important role in boosting spirits that a group of residents established the ‘Nagasaki Amateur Dramatic Corps’ and held performances, under humorous pseudonyms, in a settlement building that they dubbed the ‘Olympic Theatre’. The first issue of the two-page English- language newspaper The Nagasaki Shipping List, published here for about one year from November ELJM, ran a long article on the first performance of the season and ended with a ‘hint’ about the need for better musical accompaniment: The opening piece ‘Tweedleton’s Tail Coat,’ was throughout well sustained. Mr. DRINKWATER as TOBY TWEEDLETON was excellent; Mr. K. OCKNEY as the retired Linen Draper, acted his part admirably although it was perhaps, we thought, a little over acted. Miss TODDLES came forward in this piece with her usual elegancy – and delighted the Audience by her easy and charming acting, we must compliment her on her exquisite toilet, and predict a great career for so talented an artist. Mr. STRAW performed a very awkward part as BLACKBERRYTHISTLETOP (Farmer) very well, his rendering of the dialect and the boisterous guffaw of a country bumpkin were excellent...We must thank the company for a very pleasantly spent evening, and wishing them every success, we hope to see them soon again in action. If we might be allowed to make a delicate hint to some of our Musical Amateurs, that an Amateur Orchestra would be an improvement on the present limited resources of the Corps in that quarter, we do so, and hope to see some of our talent fall in to support them.I The Nagasaki Amateur Dramatic Corps indeed continued to prosper, their plays and musical performances taking on the air of professional productions.The admission fee collected at the door was used for the upkeep and improvement of the theatre, which later found a permanent home in the building at No. GE O¯ ura used previously by the foreign settlement’s Municipal Council. Referred to as the ‘Public Hall’, this institution served over the
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following years as a venue for a wide variety of events that provided foreign residents with a welcome diversion from their isolated existence, everything from local entertainment like the above to performances by the ‘Annie May Abbot Magic Show’, ‘Kellar and Cunard, the World-Famous Royal Illusionists’ and other companies touring the ports of East Asia, charity concerts, speeches by religious figures and travelling scholars, exhibitions of Japanese antiques, auctions, and receptions to welcome the crews of visiting warships. One of the most sensational entertainments ever witnessed in Nagasaki was ‘G. Chiarini’s Royal Italian Circus and Great Wild Beast Show’, which visited this port in April ELLK after a similar performance in Kobe.A cluster of vacant lots in the rear part of the O¯ ura district was allocated for the circus, and the entire cast of characters, including two elephants, three full-grown tigers, three lions, two bears and ‘a large collection of monkeys’, descended from the NipponYu sen Kaisha (NYK) steamerOwari- maru, which had been chartered̄ for the occasion.The main tent seated more than H,DDD people, and the show played to a full house at every performance held over the four-day period, although it should be noted that Nagasaki was included in the tour, not because it had a population sufficient to justify a series of performances, but because it had a foreign settlement linked to other international ports in East Asia. Before the circus left for Tientsin (Tianjin), China, the editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express commented as follows in a long article on the subject: In closing this brief notice of what may really be termed an unusual event in the history of Nagasaki, we can safely say that no such exhibition has ever been seen here before, and consequently to the initiated it has been no matter of surprise to see the thousands of natives flocking daily from the surrounding districts in every direction, attracted by the news of the arrival of the great show, of which such glowing accounts have been appearing in the Tokio [sic] and Osaka journals for some months past.J Although not mentioned in the circus advertisement or related newspaper articles, the members of the ‘Nagasaki Club’ played an instrumental role in inviting the circus to Nagasaki and in making arrangements with Japanese authorities to hold it in the O¯ ura neighbourhood.This club, like the Municipal Council, had been formed as soon as the O¯ ura groundwork reached completion in
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ELJE and served as one of the indispensable social institutions of the foreign settlement.The club rules were laid out in early ELJF, and British merchants William J.Alt and Herbert M.Wright of Alt & Co. were chosen as trustees. In ELLE, the club moved to a two-storey building on the Bund at No. ED O¯ ura and continued under the supervision of Charles Sutton, British owner of several local enterprises including the English-language newspaper The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express.The newspaper announced the unveiling of the new club building: It is now to be hoped that the handsome building which has arisen on the finest site on the Bund will give visitors a more favourable impression of the resources of Nagasaki than they have hitherto received.The principal feature of the Club is undoubtedly the billiard room, occupying one side of the ground floor of the building; on the other are placed the bar room, lavatory, and servants rooms.The second floor is not yet finished; a fine room, also occupying an entire side, will be divided by movable partitions into reading and card rooms, so that if necessary the whole can be thrown open and utilized for lectures, etc.Another billiard table is placed in a comfortable room opposite, while favourable notice must not be omitted of the spacious verandah which commands an excellent view of the harbour and shipping.K Like other gentlemen’s clubs dotting the trails of the British Empire, the Nagasaki Club was a rather exclusive place where men of a certain social and financial standing hobnobbed with their peers and took refuge from the pressures of business and the critical gaze of wives, but as the above article indicates it also served as a place to welcome visitors and proof of Nagasaki’s membership in the larger club of international relations.Aside from its usual daily activity, the club accommodated events such as dances, costume parties, memorial celebrations, and send-off parties for departing residents. The Nagasaki Foreign Settlement also had its own Masonic Lodge.The Freemasons are said to have started in the Middle Ages as a organization of skilled stone masons involved in the construction of the great cathedrals of Britain. The organization later expanded to include other occupations, but the rule, compass and other tools of the stonemason were retained as symbols of human equality,justice, and other ideals.The Nagasaki Masonic Lodge (Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, No. KED, S.C.) was inaugurated in February ELLI, a few months after the
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Mitsubishi Company leased the Nagasaki Shipyard from the Meiji Government.The first meeting was held at No. ID O¯ ura (Sagarimatsu Bund) on I October the same year, and Arthur Norman, editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, was elected to the post of grand master. Most of the founding members were British employees of Mitsubishi Company already affiliated with lodges founded previously in Kobe andYokohama. Men of various backgrounds joined the lodge and participated in regular meetings and social events. The Nagasaki Lodge was declared dormant in EMEM, a period that coincides with the retirement of foreign employees from the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and the exodus of most Freemasons from the port.L Seven of the sixteen founding members of the Nagasaki Masonic Lodge were Scottish, a ratio that reflects the influence of Scots in the affairs of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Given the strong Scottish presence here, it is hardly surprising that the annual Feast of Saint Andrew enjoyed such an important position on the foreign settlement calendar. The December ELLK celebration, convened at Fukuya restaurant, was hosted by eleven Scottish residents and attended by some forty foreign and Japanese guests including the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture. Also on hand was the editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, whose report on the event ran for four columns in the newspaper, giving readers a rundown on the dinner menu (sheep’s head broth, cod head, haggis, currant dumplings, roley poley, etc.), the list of toasts and songs – everything from ‘Our Patron Saint’ and ‘Bonnie Scotland’ to ‘Wullie Brewed a Peck o’Maut’ – and the content of speeches given by J.M. Stoddart (mining engineer at the Mitsubishi Takashima Coal Mine) and a number of other hosts and guests. In his tribute to Saint Andrew, Stoddart surmised that if he reminded his audience ‘that our Saint was very fond of the ladies (or rather that the ladies were very fond of him)’, they would ‘at once reply that that is the great characteristic feature of all our fellow countrymen’.American Consul J.M. Birch was also called on to speak, and his comments, rephrased in the above newspaper, alluded indirectly to the spirit of the many Scots who contributed to the development of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement: That they of Scotland residing in Nagasaki celebrate [the Feast of Saint Andrew] was a reminder of the fact that a similar celebration was being held that evening wherever there were Scotchmen
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sufficient in number to form a Saint Andrew’s Society; and he was sure that no national society had shown greater devotion to native land, or been imbued with a broader patriotism. Nevertheless, when it had been the fortune of its members to become naturalized citizens … beyond the seas, no citizens, either in war or peace, had shown themselves more loyal and faithful to the institutions of their adopted country.M The most influential Scotsman of all was away from Nagasaki in ELLK.After the demise of his company,Thomas Glover had spent the first half of the ELKDs clearing away the shreds of his company, working tirelessly to increase the profitability of the Takashima Coal Mine and to settle debts with his creditors, and all the time serving as a leader in the administration and social life of the foreign settlement. In ELKJ, he accepted an offer from Mitsubishi to serve as an adviser to the company as it expanded on both domestic and international levels.The fact that he put his Nagasaki mansion ‘Ipponmatsu’ up for sale in December ELKK indicates that he intended to leave this port and move to Tokyo permanently.ED However, the house remained in the possession of the family after all, perhaps because no one could match the price asked for the famous property, but more likely because Glover soon realized that he would be back in Nagasaki to coordinate Mitsubishi’s efforts to acquire the Takashima Coal Mine.
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MARYPORT NESTLES IN the northwestern corner of England where the River Ellen flows into the Irish Sea from the rolling farmland of Cumbria.The Romans called the town Alauna and used it as a supply harbour for their nearby fort, one in a string of coastal defence stations stretching up to Bowness-on-Solway and the western extremity of Hadrian’s Wall. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Sir Humphrey Senhouse named it Maryport in honour of his wife and began to exploit the deposits of coal and iron found in abundance in the area.Then the construction of railway links in the early nineteenth century turned the former fishing village into a bustling port with loading docks, ship- building facilities, iron foundries and housing for workers. Wilson Walker was born in Maryport in GNJK, the eldest son of a former master mariner named William Walker who ran a successful chandler business on Nelson Street in the heart of town. Wilson and his siblings were deeply affected by the maritime culture and vibrant commercial activity of their hometown, and like many of their Maryport predecessors they grew up looking out to sea and dreaming of faraway lands.G Wilson Walker’s certificate of competency as second officer,
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issued at Maryport on GN October GNLL and preserved today at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, reveals that the Maryport native left home at the age of fifteen and rose through the echelons of a traditional British maritime education: apprentice for one year from September GNLF on a vessel called the Coro Coro sailing out of Liverpool, ordinary seaman for three years on the Vicuna also based in Liverpool, and another year as third officer on the steamship Brazil based in Glasgow. His first assignment as second mate was on the IOF-tonne brig-rigged steamer Filipino built by Denny Brothers of Dumbarton and sold to the Spanish Government for service on the Hong Kong - Manila mail line.The Filipino set sail from Glasgow on G January GNLM and reached Manila on schedule, but the Spanish Govern- ment refused to pay for the ship because it could not produce the guaranteed speed of twelve knots. It languished on the coast of China for about a year until the owners heard rumours about the demand for ships in Japan and ordered the crew to take it to Osaka via Nagasaki.H Freed from his previous commitments, the now twenty-three- year-old Wilson Walker left the Filipino at Nagasaki and accepted an offer to serve on the Naruto, a steamer used by Glover & Co. to transport cargo. In a handwritten memoir penned in GOGJ shortly before his death,Walker describes a visit with Thomas Glover to the Takashima Coal Mine and his subsequent role in the activities of the Scotsman’s company: I was down at the mine one day late in April with Mr Glover. He went down the shaft and came up greatly excited with a piece of stone in his hand that was black on one side and he quite expected that they would be mining coal in a short time, and we discussed about a steam collier he had in mind to build to run the coal to Shanghai, and he wanted me to take charge of her, right from Aberdeen where she was going to be built, and it was decided that I would go home right away and have a little holiday before the order to build went home. I was very glad of the opportunity, as I had had a bad attack of inflammation of the lungs. So I left Nagasaki on the Nth of May GNLO on the P.M.S.S. Costa Rica for Yokohama, where I transferred to the P.M.S.S. Great Republic for San Francisco, and in due course arrived home to find that Glover & Co had failed, and this left me for a little while in Queer Street. I was offered a position as Chief Officer of the Blue Funnel S.S. Achilles by Captain Russell, but Captain G.R. Stevens (late of the S.S. Naruto) was in England building a barque for Messrs Holme
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Ringer & Co. called the Zohrab so I accepted the Chief Officer’s position as far as Nagasaki where we arrived in due course and I left Zohrab after discharging the cargo for that port.I Although the collapse of Glover & Co. left him in ‘queer street’,Walker made use of the time in England to obtain his captain’s licence, a fact corroborated by Lloyd’s Captains Registers which shows that he passed his certificate of competency as master in Belfast on N October GNLO.J The Zohrab was named after Edward Zohrab Holme, a former associate of Thomas Glover who in GNLL supervised the installation of equipment at a spinning and weaving factory established in Kagoshima by the Satsuma Clan. As Walker points out, it was commissioned by Holme Ringer & Co., the shipping enterprise that Holme and former Glover & Co. employee Frederick Ringer had launched in Nagasaki in GNLN. The barque reached Nagasaki on I September GNMF, and Wilson Walker once again descended the gang ladder onto the shores of Japan. The Maryport native goes on to describe his employment by Iwasaki Yataro#, the young samurai of the Tosa Clan who, as mentioned earlier, had come to Nagasaki shortly after the opening of the port to investigate possibilities for foreign trade. After returning to his native province, Iwasaki had been despatched to Nagasaki once again in GNLM to open a branch office of Tosa Sho#kai, a firm established by the clan to administrate trade and transportation activities. When the Nagasaki branch office closed after the Meiji Restoration, Iwasaki had moved to the head office in Osaka to assume the position of chief. Continues Walker: From Nagasaki I took passage on the B.I.S.S. Corringa for Kobe where I joined the S.S.Tsuru as Chief Officer.The Tsuru had just been bought by the Prince of Tosa,through Mr IwasakiYataro, his agent and general commercial manager. Our first voyage was from Kobe to Shanghai with a cargo of copper slabs, then we ran between Temposan (Osaka) and Shinagawa (Tokyo). I left the Tsuru to join the Nautilus (Momijinoga) also belonging to Tosa. The Nautilus was a wooden ship, a typical American river steamer and quite unfit for ocean work. She had been bought from Messrs Russell & Co of Shanghai and bye and bye resold to that firm. About the time the Nautilus was laid up a small German schooner called the Hindu was dismasted on the coast of Shikoku and towed into Kobe where she was sold by auction and bought by Mr John Pittman ofYokohama, at whose request I left the Nautilus
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and rigged the Hindu and sailed her over to Shanghai...Whilst in Shanghai I heard that Mr IwasakiYataro had been enquiring for me and in fact he sent a verbal message for me to return to Japan, and I took the first steamer back to Yokohama where Mr Iwasaki gave me command of the S.S. Orissa (Kaijiun Maru) and I took her down to Nagasaki for alteration and repair, and afterwards ran between Temposan and Kochi Tosa. After the Orissa, I had command of the Migoto (Horai Maru). In October GNMF, the Meiji Government issued an order for all enterprises operated by the former feudal domains to disband. The Tosa Clan circumvented this regulation by officially abolishing its trading and shipping agency but replacing it with an enterprise called Tsukumo Sho#kai that took charge of the clan’s three foreign-built ships on a commission basis and, like its predecessor, carried merchandise and passengers on the Osaka- Tokyo and Kobe-Kochi routes. In July GNMG, the government officially abolished the old system of feudal domains and replaced it with the modern prefecture system, a change that stripped the samurai class of special status and forced its members to seek jobs within the new social structure.Tsukumo Sho#kai declared its independence and procured exclusive rights to the profitable camphor trade from Ko#chi Prefecture, marking the transition by changing its name to Mitsukawa Sho#kai. In March GNMI, the company underwent a further change in name from Mitsukawa Sho#kai to Mitsubishi Sho#kai, adopting the emblem that remains the company symbol to this day.The emblem combined the three-tiered water chestnut leaves, crest of the Iwasaki family, and the three oak leaves, crest of theYamanouchi family,former feudal lords of Tosa.This cemented the dominion of the Iwasaki family and marked the birth of the Mitsubishi Company, which would go on to play a crucial role in the modernization of Japan.The company continued to acquire ships and to expand its range of activity during GNMI, but it was an event in GNMJ, namely the ‘Taiwan Expedition’, that catapulted the company into a period of rapid growth. In February GNMJ, the Meiji Government ordered a punitive expedition to Taiwan as retaliation for the murder of several shipwrecked Okinawa fishermen by Taiwan aborigines three years earlier.A resolution was passed in April to establish an office in Nagasaki to handle details and to commission foreign shipping companies to carry troops and munitions to Taiwan.The latter
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plan was foiled, however, by the American and later British declaration of neutrality in the conflict.With nowhere else to go, government officials turned to the fledgling, privately-owned Mitsubishi Sho#kai and received Iwasaki Yataro#’s promise to provide unconditional support for the initiative. Iwasaki received the transport order on HN July GNMJ.To augment the ships already available in the Mitsubishi fleet, the government commissioned Albert R. Brown, a former P&O captain employed in the Japanese government lighthouse-building programme, to travel to Hong Kong and other Asian ports to purchase second-hand steamships. Between May GNMJ and March GNMK a total of thirteen ships (nine of which were used in the expedition) were procured for PG,KML,NFF, one of the greatest expenditures of the new Meiji Government.K The Japanese forces met little resistance from the aborigines but found an unexpected enemy in Taiwan mosquitoes, as shown by the fact that KLG of the KMI deaths among Japanese soldiers were due to malaria and other tropical diseases.The bodies of the dead soldiers were buried on the beach and exhumed later for return to Japan. It is said that the corpses were so badly decomposed upon arrival in Nagasaki that the wharf runners had to be plied with saké before they would agree to carry the grim cargo to the crematorium.L Japan won a KFF,FFF tael indemnity from China during subsequent negotiations with Qing Dynasty officials in Beijing and asserted Japan’s authority over the Ryu kyu(Okinawa) Islands.M The foray to Taiwan was significant for several̄ ̄ reasons. It marked the resurrection of Japan’s interest in its Asian neighbours and, by extension, the first step in its long march down the road to the Second World War. It was also the first large-scale military movement by Japanese troops since Toyotomi Hideyoshi led his armies on the unsuccessful expedition to Korea in the late sixteenth century, and it gave hundreds of young Japanese men a taste of adventure on the open seas and instilled in the collective consciousness at home the first inkling of the benefits derived from war. This was particularly evident in Nagasaki, which enjoyed an economic boom as a result of all the ships and troops visiting the port.The editor of The Nagasaki Express described the situation as follows: The harbour, which by the shipping list would appear to be a rather bare one, is well filled with Japanese men-of-war and
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transports, which are coaling and receiving supplies of stores, and as this necessitates the employment of craft to convey these supplies to the vessels awaiting to receive them, the harbour has at times been literally strewn with small native craft of every description.The wants of the military visitors who are billeted in the town, have created a busy time for the native residents generally, and the majority of them must certainly regard times of war as being infinitely more prosperous and satisfactory to them than the dull monotony of peace.Articles of food have, we hear, increased considerably in cost, owing to the recent demand, and there is every prospect that prices will continue advancing until further supplies are received from the interior.N
Mitsubishi records for GNMJ, the year of the Taiwan Expedition, confirm Wilson Walker’s comment that he served as commander of the Scottish-built iron screw steamer Migoto, renamed the Ho#rai-maru.O This document also names Wilson’s younger brother Robert Neil Walker as chief officer of the same vessel, suggesting that Wilson had scouted Robert to join the crew of the ship during the preparations for the Taiwan Expedition.The level of respect paid to the foreign commanders is indicated by their salaries and by the other amenities provided for them by the company. According to the above document, Wilson Walker’s monthly salary was HHK yen, the highest paid by Mitsubishi and quite a handsome remuneration considering that Japanese stokers, deck hands and wharf runners earned only four or five yen per month. It is also noteworthy that not a single Japanese commander or officer was working as yet on the Mitsubishi steamships. Although the Ho#rai-maru did not apparently sail beyond Japanese waters during the Taiwan Expedition, it is certain that Wilson Walker – as Iwasaki’s most trusted captain – played a vital role in its planning and execution.This conjecture is supported by the fact that he was chosen from among the twenty-seven master mariners employed by the company and appointed to the position of ‘superintending captain’ when it changed its name from Mitsubishi Sho#kai to Mitsubishi Jo#kisen Kaisha (‘Mitsubishi Steamship Company’) later the same year. Discharged with honour from war duty and bolstered by generous government subsidies, the Mitsubishi Steamship Co. turned its attention to the international routes monopolized hitherto by foreign shipping firms. In early GNMK, it started a
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weekly service betweenYokohama and Shanghai with stops at Kobe and Nagasaki, using its four best ships: the Tokyo-maru, Niigata-maru, Kanagawa-maru and Takasago-maru. Japan’s first regular international service, the Shanghai line marked a significant step in this country’s struggle to increase the national wealth through commercial enterprise and to wrestle control of Japanese shipping from the hands of foreign companies. In his memoir,Wilson Walker, who took command of the Niigata-maru (the former P&O steamer Behar), recalls the inauguration of Japan’s first regular international steamship service and goes on to praise the efforts of IwasakiYataro# and his assistants: The Tokyo Maru (P.M.S.S. New York),Niigata Maru (P & O S.S. Behar),Takasago Maru (P & O S.S. Delta), and Kanagawa Maru (P & O S.S. Madras) were chosen to run to Shanghai... I think that it was on the GFth February GNMK that the Tokyo Maru leftYokohama for Shanghai via ports including Nagasaki. Mr Iwasaki was with me in my gig when the Tokyo Maru, Capt Dunn let go from the buoy, and he took my hand and said I am feeling very happy today...The Pacific Mail Company tried on a big bluff at first but when they began to know the man they had to deal with they changed their tune somewhat, and after a vain struggle for about a year they were glad to sell out their ships and all their belongings to the Mitsu Bishi Company.When the P.M. Steamers changed hands I was offered one of them, but Mr Iwasaki preferred that I should remain on shore as Superintending Captain, and I did. It is not in my power to chronicle the strenuous times, the constant unremitting labour of Mr IwasakiYataro himself or of his two able Co Directors, Messrs Ishikawa and Kawada, for on these three gentlemen the whole labour of organising this the first large business in Japan – it devolved on these men first to learn and devise, then to instruct subordinates, with no precedent to guide them, no shipping law, nothing, they just took a hold of the raw material and have left the Nippon Yusen Kaisha behind them as a monument of their gigantic labour. Mitsubishi’s arch rival on theYokohama-Shanghai line was the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., an American firm that, as the name indicates, had received a contract from the US Postmaster General to carry mail across the Pacific Ocean. It also conveyed the thousands of Chinese labourers hired to work on the American transcontinental railroads and until now enjoyed a virtual monopoly on passenger and cargo transportation on the east coast of Japan.The competition continued until October
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GNMK, when Mitsubishi bought out the Pacific Mail Company’s interests, including the four steamships Costa Rica, Oregonian, Golden Age and Nevada and all of the shore facilities inYokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki, and took over responsibility for the mail service between Japan and China.At this point the company name was changed to Yu#bin Kisen Mitsubishi Kaisha (Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co.). Next in line was the Peninsular and Occidental Steam Navigation Co. (P&O).The famous British company entered the fracas in February GNML, challenging Mitsubishi’s monopoly by starting its own regular service between Shanghai andYokohama. Iwasaki Yataro# again fought back, cutting salaries and reducing passenger and freight fares. He also launched what may be the country’s first press blitz, ordering a comparison of the per- formance of his Hiroshima-maru against that of the P&O steamship Bombay and distributing the results widely for publication.GF The contest resembled sho#gi – the Japanese version of chess in which a player can recycle pieces taken from his or her opponent – in that the Hiroshima-maru was the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.’s Golden Age purchased and renamed only the previous year. But the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. won out and succeeded in driving P&O off the route by the end of GNML and in establishing itself as the leading presence on Japan’s international sea routes. Another violent upheaval that affected both the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. and the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement was the Satsuma Rebellion of GNMM, a revolt by samurai of the former clans of southern Kyushu disgruntled over their loss of status after the Meiji Restoration.The Satsuma Clan had played a key role in the political revolution that rocked Japan at the end of the Edo Period, and feudal lord Shimazu Hisamitsu had associated closely with Thomas Glover and led the way in importing foreign ships and establishing the Kosuge Patent Slip, Japan’s first Western-style ship repair dock. After its rebirth as Kagoshima Prefecture, however, the domain had begun to raise eyebrows in Tokyo by refusing to pay taxes to the national government and allowing its citizens to ignore the ban on wearing swords and to generally carry on in their old feudal ways.The government tried to curb the tide of revolt by sending a Mitsubishi steamship to Kagoshima to remove ammunition from the government arsenal there, but the forces of charismatic rebel leader Saigo# Takamori interfered,
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attacking the arsenal, seizing weapons and ammunition and sparking an insurrection. Declaring his intention to bring up matters with the government in Tokyo, Saigo# marched out of Kagoshima with an army of about GI,FFF troops, a number that tripled when angry samurai from other Kyushu domains fell in with the force on the way to Kumamoto. A government conscript regiment, supplied by Mitsubishi steamships sailing back and forth between Tokyo and Kyushu under government consign- ment, waited at Kumamoto Castle and repulsed the rebels after a long blood-drenched siege.The confrontation between the ragtag battalion of angry samurai and the conscript government army was a last desperate showdown between the old and the new in Japan. Armoured by pride and birthright, the former samurai brandished swords like slivers of bushido# spirit and often refused even to touch rifles or cannons.The salaried conscript army, on the other hand, was drawn from the lower strata of society and systematically trained in the use of guns and artillery. Nagasaki turned almost overnight into a safe haven and supply base for the government ships carrying troops and munitions to Kumamoto. Before long it also took on the role of receptacle for the hundreds of wounded government soldiers carried away from the battlefields.The owners of buildings in the foreign settlement had little choice but to acquiesce to the government demand for temporary accommodations. Among the foreign facilities converted into makeshift hospitals in the spring of GNMM was the Walsh Hall & Co. bungalow at No. GH Higashiyamate, the Occidental Hotel opened earlier in the former Alt & Co. premises at No. M Oura, and the tea-firing godowns in the rear quarters of the settlement. Convalescing Japanese soldiers poured out into the lanes and backstreets, loitered in large numbers on the Bund, and elicited comments from displeased residents that the foreign settlement was no longer foreign. Another result of the trouble in Kyushu was a government decision to impose cost-cutting measures, including the closure of several English-language academies established by the Ministry of Education only three years earlier. One of the institutions shut down was the Nagasaki Eigo Gakko# (Nagasaki English School). The two foreign instructors engaged there, Briton M.J. Kavanagh and American Alexander Arnold, suddenly found themselves unemployed. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express reported the news as an addendum to an article on an oral examination held at
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the school only days earlier.According to the newspaper, a large number of consuls and other foreign residents attended the examination and ‘frequently attested by applause their hearty and cordial appreciation of the talent displayed in the quick, ready and correct manner in which the most intricate and difficult questions were answered’.GG The writer points out that the Japanese students’ remarkable ability in English was due to the ‘careful and skilful training they had undergone at the hands of their able foreign tutors, Messrs. Arnold and Kavanagh’ and concludes the report with a comment that smacks of Eurocentric colonial attitudes: ‘The examination was the most successful ever held in Nagasaki, and one which clearly proves that the Japanese, when under the guidance and teaching of zealous preceptors, are by no means inferior to foreigners in mental capacity.’ After devastating losses at Kumamoto, Taharazaka and Nobeoka, Saigo# Takamori committed suicide by seppuku on HJ September GNMM, and the remainder of his army soon surrendered their swords.Thus came to a close Japan’s first and last modern civil war, a conflict that pitted the old feudal system in a losing struggle against the new system based on Western models and placed the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. firmly in the vanguard of this country’s push for modernization. In December, the foreign captains employed by Mitsubishi received GFF-yen bonuses for their efforts, and Iwasaki Yataro# became the first civilian decorated by the Meiji Government, receiving the Fourth Class Order of the Rising Sun for his services during the Satsuma Rebellion. If the acquisition of a working fleet of steamships was the first priority of the Japanese shipping industry during the early years of the Meiji Period, the second was the development of human resources capable of operating, managing and expanding that fleet. IwasakiYataro# addressed this problem in GNML by establishing the Mitsubishi Nautical School and by allotting one of his ships, the Seimyo#-maru, specifically for the training of young Japanese mariners.To provide students with practical experience on the open seas, he ordered the school to arrange for a voyage to England and appointed Wilson Walker as commander. The Niigata-maru underwent preparations in Yokohama Harbour including the removal of all its aging engines, boilers and other machinery.Then the masts and decks were readied for travel under sail, a cargo of several hundred tonnes of rice was stored in
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the hold, and the ship glided out ofTokyo Bay in early March GNMM. During the five-month voyage to London via Singapore and the Cape of Good Hope,Walker taught his Japanese officers and crew the rudiments of ocean navigation and brought them up to date on all the wisdom, history and folklore accumulated in sea-going Britain since the days of John Cabot.The Niigata-maru reached Deal on the southern coast of Kent in late July and proceeded to Gravesend at the mouth of the Thames, from which point it was towed up the river to the docks of London.The voyage of the Niigata-maru was the first probe extended by corporate Japan to Europe, and its humble cargo of rice was like an offering to the new deity of Western technology and civilization.The arrival of the Niigata-maru and its significance in navigation history was noted in Britain if only because of the curiosity of a ship from a still little-known country commanded by a native son: A fine ship called the Niigata Maru, Captain Walker, has arrived in the Thames from Japan. This is the finest vessel bearing the Japanese flag which has entered the Port of London.Though built as a steamer, she has made this long passage round the Cape under sail, occupying fourteen days.The crew consists of IJ men, all of whom, with three or four exceptions, are Japanese.The Niigata Maru brings a cargo of about GLFF tonnes, chiefly rice, and is likely to be the first of a series of regular traders. Captain Walker reports that the Japanese sailors behaved admirably and in any emergency were always ready to do their part.The Niigata Maru is to be refitted with boilers and machinery and will then return with the same crew to Japan. Captain Walker is a native of Maryport and has been in the employ of the Japanese Government about ten years.GH The Niigata-maru left the Thames under tow for Gravesend and set sail for Scotland, following the southern coast of England to Lizard Point in Cornwall and then sweeping northward to the River Clyde, where it underwent refitting at the shipyard of Lobnitz, Coulborn & Co. in Renfrew near Glasgow.GI During the period of about one year required to install engines and boilers, the Japanese crew engaged in further studies about maritime technology, especially the duties of engineer, stoker and other tasks related to the use of ‘iron wind’ (as auxiliary power was called grudgingly at the time), because the Niigata-maru would be a steamship on its return voyage.
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On HH September GNMN the Niigata-maru and its now confident and experienced crew left the Firth of Clyde and proceeded due south, this time veering to the east at Gibraltar and steaming through the Mediterranean Sea to Malta and Port Said, passing the Suez Canal in mid-October and arriving back triumphantly inYokohama Harbour on HI November GNMN.GJ In a short period of only twenty months, a chosen group of young, virtually inexperienced Japanese sailors underwent a hands-on course in Western-style seamanship, witnessed the evolution from sailing ship to steamer, and came back to their native land to take up the task of establishing and developing a modern shipping industry. Riding the wave of success of theYokohama-Shanghai line, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. inaugurated a regular service from Yokohama to Hong Kong in GNMO, with stops at Kobe, Nagasaki and Shanghai, establishing a five-port chain that would remain one of the most frequently travelled maritime routes in East Asia until being choked off by the animosities of the Second World War. The Niigata-maru made the first run on J October GNMO, arriving in Hong Kong on GH October.At the time of the third voyage in mid-November, the company held a luncheon on board ship in Hong Kong harbour to celebrate the inauguration of the line and invited some seventy guests including the governor of the British colony. The round of toasts made by the hosts and guests was quoted verbatim in the Hong Kong newspaper The Daily Press and later reprinted in The Japan Gazette.GK These provide a rare glimpse into British-Japanese relations at the time and into the growing international reputation of both Japan and the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. Captain Walker proposed the first toast, simply ‘to the Queen’, and the governor responded with a munificent toast to the emperor and empress of Japan, remarking that it was probably the first time that such a toast had been made in Hong Kong. This was followed by a speech from Ando# Taro#, the Japanese consul in the colony: Gentlemen, in the name of my sovereign, I have the honour to thank your Excellency for having proposed the health of His Majesty, and you gentlemen, for having received the toast with such unanimous cordiality … I beg also to thank your Excellency, and you gentlemen, who have been so kind as to honour the banquet given by the agents in the name of their company, and whom I have great pleasure in meeting on board this vessel, which
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inaugurated the opening of this new line under one of the most trusted captains of the Mitsu Bishi fleet.Although she has only completed the third voyage since the inauguration, yet we have the satisfaction to find that in these three voyages the steamer has had such good returns of freights as have afforded great encouragement to all concerned and made us feel that the future success of this new undertaking is assured. The felicitations continued with toasts from a representative of the merchants of Hong Kong and from Jose Loureiro, consul- general of Portugal for China and Japan and a former Nagasaki resident who said prophetically:‘I hope that in future years we may see the Mitsu Bishi all over the world.’The last toast of the afternoon was made by P.Ryrie to the health of Captain Wilson Walker and the officers of the Niigata-maru. As it gained momentum at home and abroad, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. branched out from the shipping industry and implemented a land-based strategy, establishing the Mitsubishi Exchange Office in Osaka to handle the company’s growing network of offices and warehouses, investing heavily in the Tokio Marine Insurance Company and Meiji Life Insurance Company, and taking a leading role in the formation of the Nippon Tetsudo# Kaisha (Japan Railroad Company) and the project to build a railroad into the northern reaches of Japan.Two of the company’s most important acquisitions in the early GNNFs were the Takashima Coal Mine and the Government Shipyard in Nagasaki, both of which had profound implications for the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and for the economic development of this port. Near the end of his company’s existence,Thomas Glover had turned to his Dutch friends on Dejima for help in repaying a loan with the City of Glasgow Bank, and when Glover & Co. went bankrupt in August GNMF, the rights to the mine had passed to the Netherlands Trading Society as collateral. For the rest of the decade the coal mine was rocked by political changes and dissatisfaction among miners, the latter condition resulting in disturbances that are recognized today as Japan’s first labour strikes.GL The Japanese government took over in GNMJ and leased the facility to a Japanese company called Ho#rai-sha led by a swashbuckling former Tosa samurai named Goto# Sho#jiro, who then complicated matters by borrowing capital from Jardine Matheson & Co. to improve the facilities at Takashima. The
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Glover brothers and other foreign engineers and managers remained in their positions despite the changes of ownership, but the mine, plagued by equipment breakdowns, accidents, outbreaks of disease, and persistent worker unrest, failed to fulfil Goto#’s expectations or to solve his obligations to Jardine Matheson & Co. Finally, fellow Tosa samurai Iwasaki Yataro#,with the help of Thomas Glover and Meiji educator FukuzawaYukichi,bailed out Goto#’s debts and purchased the mine and all its facilities for the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co., including machinery, buildings, thirty miles of tramway, three rich veins of coal, and the manpower of some I,FFF workers.GM In February GNNG, just before the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. officially assumed ownership of the Takashima Coal Mine, Thomas Glover arranged for a demonstration of dynamite in Nagasaki and provided his tennis lawn at Ipponmatsu for the event. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of the detonating blasting cap and dynamite, had taken out a patent on blasting gelatin dynamite only five years earlier, and his company was marketing the invention worldwide as a safe alternative to gunpowder and earlier forms of dynamite in mines and construction sites. Holme Ringer & Co., with Thomas Glover’s support, was hoping to convince Japanese authorities about the effectiveness of the explosive and to serve as agents for its introduction to Japan.A large number of foreign and Japanese residents gathered at Glover’s house on the afternoon of O February GNNG, and a representative of the Nobel Company conducted a series of experiments that was reported later in The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express: A good number of the foreign residents, including ladies, and a large concourse of native officials and others interested in mining and engineering were present … [The dynamite’s] destructive properties were well illustrated by the entire demolition of a solid block of granite, and the breaking of a massive casting, weighing half a tonne, into a thousand pieces … Its harmlessness was equally as satisfactorily convincing, as a charge was burnt in an ordinary charcoal fire without the slightest sign of an explosion, and a box containing GF lbs. was afterwards blown into the air by a ten- pound charge of gunpowder, completely destroying the box without in any way affecting the dynamite.Various other minor examples were also given, and at J o’clock the proceedings adjourned to the bay, where experiments in the water were made. To illustrate torpedo warfare, a small native boat was destroyed by a
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charge of dynamite connected by insulated wires with a dynamo electric battery, contained in a boat at a safe distance away, and when the current was connected the doomed craft was blown to atoms and a column of water thrown high into the air. Several other torpedoes were also cast into the water and exploded by the same means.Those afloat in the vicinity had a rather unexpected windfall in the shape of fish killed by the explosions, of which great quantities were picked up.GN Although deemed a great success by Thomas Glover and his associates, the dynamite experiment was condemned as a dangerous nuisance by the French priests stationed at O¯ ura Catholic Church and its adjacent rectory, which were located within cringing distance from the lawn at Ipponmatsu. In a strong-worded letter to the British consul, Glover rejects the complaint from the French priests, pointing out that the dynamite caused no damage to his own property,even though his house and greenhouses were situated in much closer proximity to the explosions than the church.The Scotsman then rolls out a counterattack, saying ‘I must express my extreme surprise at such an unfounded complaint emanating from the Roman Catholic mission whose pupils for the past year have made by their hideous yelling our bungalow almost uninhabitable’ and asking the consul to convey the message to the priests at the church.GO Despite the noise, dynamite brought a revolutionary change to the digging methods in Japanese mines and greatly increased the output of coal and other minerals. In Nagasaki, aside from loosening the coal veins criss-crossing the sea bottom near Takashima, the explosive was used to carve openings in the rocky Nagasaki hillsides for roads and buildings. One of these is still evident today: the passage blown out of the cliff at Higashiyamate to provide access from the O¯ ura district to the hillside residential area of the foreign settlement. In a report on the state of property leases in the foreign settlement dated HG January GNNG, Nagasaki Consul James Troup informed the British Minister in Tokyo that no Japanese-owned buildings existed in the foreign settlement, with the exception of the Post Office, Customs House and the offices of the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co.HF The Nagasaki Post Office was located at No. G Umegasaki, next door to the Great NorthernTelegraph Co. office with which it shared a close working relationship.The Nagasaki Customs House was located across the creek at No. G
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O¯ ura and included two landing jetties and storage facilities on the Bund.All of these properties had been returned to government ownership in keeping with the Land Regulations of the foreign settlement and under the approval of the foreign consuls. However, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. is an interesting exception in that it was a private Japanese company and so strictly speaking had no legal right to procure land in the foreign settlement. Clearly, this special status was acknowledged and facilitated by Thomas Glover and other foreign residents and businesses with interests in the company. In GNNG, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. was operating facilities in two locations in the foreign settlement: the Nagasaki agency at No. G Dejima and the Mitsubishi Coal Office at No. JN Sagarimatsu.The lease to the latter property had been held to date by Holme Ringer & Co., which in turn had acquired it from Boyd & Co., a manufacturer of engines and boilers that moved to Yokohama in GNMM and was later bought out by Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co.HG The transfer of ownership of the Takashima Coal Mine from Goto# Sho#jiro to the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. was celebrated in Nagasaki on G April GNNG with a banquet at Fukuya restaurant and, the following evening, a trip out to the island by a group of Japanese and foreign guests to enjoy dinner on the Mitsubishi steamer Akitushima-maru and a display of fireworks. The editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express concluded his report on the celebration as follows: The name and resources of the Mitsubishi Co. will tend to strengthen the mine more than any other name, either of individuals or of combinations, in Japan. In wishing them success, we are only giving expression to a wish for the general good of the port: the commercial prospects of Nagasaki being so much dependent upon the prosperity of Takashima. It is only just to add that the success of the festivities of the past week were in no small degree due to the hearty and able co-operation of Messrs.T.B. Glover and W. Jamieson, the respective foreign heads of the Tankosha and the Mitsubishi S.S. Co.’s local Agency.HH The word ‘Tankosha’ is a Japanese abbreviation for Mitsubishi Coal Office, the headquarters on the Sagarimatsu waterfront where Japanese and foreign staff including Thomas Glover administrated the affairs of the Takashima Coal Mine.As stated above, the establishment of the office within the foreign
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settlement was an exception based on a spirit of cooperation between Japanese and foreign-run businesses. However, a pier originally built at the site by Boyd & Co. became a source of controversy only a month after the change of ownership when Nagasaki Prefecture informed the foreign consuls that it was granting Mitsubishi exclusive access to it as of G June GNNG. British Consul James Troup and the other consuls shot back, complaining that the government had no right to grant such a privilege to a Japanese company because the pier was located within the boundary of the foreign settlement.HI After a round of corre- spondence prolonged by waits for instructions from the foreign ministry in Tokyo, the problem was finally solved by agreement from the Japanese side to share the pier and other facilities with foreign companies. Subsequently, the Mitsubishi Coal Office became a fixture on the Nagasaki waterfront, straddling the barrier between the foreign settlement and the Japanese community and serving the interests of both. Around the same time that Thomas Glover took up the position of manager in the colliery office, a young mining engineer named John M. Stoddart arrived in Nagasaki to supervise operations at Takashima, apparently at the Scotsman’s recommendation. Stoddart had graduated in engineering from the University of Edinburgh and worked as an apprentice for the firm Rankin & Co., Glasgow,before travelling to Japan.When the Mitsubishi Co. took over the Takashima Coal Mine in GNNG, he was not only hired by the company but appointed chief mining engineer, an important position that he held until his untimely death in GNOH. During his tenure, the Mitsubishi Co. dramatically expanded its mining enterprises and rushed to the forefront of the industry in Japan.The level of respect enjoyed by Stoddart is reflected in his salary: in April GNNG, when the colliery manager Yamawaki Masakatsu was earning a monthly salary of GMK yen, Stoddart was receiving a staggering MNK yen.HJ After a continuous residence of twelve years, Stoddart returned to Scotland to marry and came back to Nagasaki with his wife at the end of a year’s furlough. The couple settled in the house at No. HMA Minamiyamate, the stone bungalow originally inhabited by Thomas Glover’s brother Alexander, commanding a spectacular view of the harbour and town of Nagasaki from the hillside.They spent a happy Christmas holiday in GNOG, entertaining and being entertained by Nagasaki friends. On I January GNOH, Stoddart
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sailed alone to Shanghai on business but came down with a bad cold.Although sick on the voyage back to Nagasaki, he resisted the protests of his friends and made the long climb through the cold night air to his house. His wife immediately called Dr Charles Arnold, a British physician living in Nagasaki since GNNL, but the disease had apparently developed into acute pneumonia and Stoddart died in his wife’s arms the following afternoon, still only thirty-six years old.The funeral was attended by dozens of foreign and Japanese friends, and the procession to Sakamoto International Cemetery was led by Japanese flower-bearers wearing black kimono embellished with the Mitsubishi crest.HK In the summer of GNNH, Thomas Glover and his younger brother Alexander departed Nagasaki on a journey to the west coast of the United States, partly for a holiday and partly to ‘investigate the resources of the Far West’.HL In an article informing readers about the departure of Nagasaki’s most prominent foreign resident, the editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express took the opportunity to heap praise and thanks on the Scottish entrepreneur: Mr.T.B. Glover, accompanied by his brother, Mr.A.J. Glover, left by the ‘Nagoya Maru’ last night en route to Oregon. We understand that he will return to Nagasaki in about six months time, the trip being partly for relaxation from business and partly with a desire to investigate on the spot the resources of the Far West. Mr. Glover’s name has so long been associated with Nagasaki, and he himself the centre and active agent of every movement for the social welfare of residents and visitors, as well as in other ways having done so much for the improvement of the port, that he will be widely missed.We only wish to join with almost every resident of Japan and China in wishing him ‘bon voyage’ and a safe return.HM As it turned out,Alexander remained in the United States and started a new family there.Thomas meanwhile returned to his wife and children in Japan and to his job at Mitsubishi, and he barely had time to distribute souvenirs before he found himself assisting in still another Mitsubishi project: the acquisition of the Government Shipyard in Nagasaki and the employment of a team of foreign experts. The Tokugawa shogunate, rushing to prepare for the imminent opening of its ports for international trade, had established a naval training institute in Nagasaki and enlisted a group of Dutch
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engineers to build a European-style iron works at Akunoura. Completed in GNLF, this facility was Japan’s first foundry, first building erected using bricks as a primary material, and first inkling of a modern shipbuilding industry. In his October GNLF letter to Rutherford Alcock, British Consul George Morrison reports as follows: The engineering factory of the Japanese is on the same side [of the harbour as the Russian quarter].The place is called Akunoura. There they have been instructed during three years by Dutch officers and they have a large factory with all the machinery for repairing or even making steam engines.A Russian frigate was last year repaired there.The Japanese intend to carry on this factory without foreign aid after next year.HN With the collapse of the shogunate in GNLN, the iron works passed into the hands of the new Meiji Government, which continued to expand it in response to the dramatic increase in maritime activity at the port. In GNNJ, three years after acquiring the Takashima Coal Mine and surging to the forefront of Japanese industry, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. took charge of the Akunoura complex under government lease, including foundry, machine shops and docks. The transfer from government to private enterprise caused some surprise because many observers had expected the Imperial Japanese Navy to take over.The editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express applauded the event if only because it was sure to bring further economic benefits to the foreign settlement: Under Government control, and managed exclusively by officials responsible only to the Government, it was scarcely to be expected that it could, and it was probably not intended that it should, enter into competition with other private firms in other places with that keen eye to business which is now-a-days absolutely necessary to ensure anything like financial success, – and which there is every prospect of the Mitsubishi Co. being able to do so.The Dockyard combines everything necessary for engineering, ship building, ship repairing, etc.; the port of Nagasaki is well situated geographically; the land-locked deep-water harbour is easily accessible, safe, and admirably adapted for these purposes; it is a coaling port; the surrounding country abounds with all descriptions of timber, from oak to cedar; skilled labour is cheap; provisions and necessaries in general are as plentiful and far cheaper than in any other part of the East; and in fact everything is strongly in favour of the Nagasaki Dockyard being made a great success in the hands of an
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energetic and influential firm with almost unlimited resources like the Mitsubishi Co., whom we sincerely wish success in their new and important undertaking.HO Just as he had turned to foreign captains to supervise steamers in the vanguard of Japan’s international shipping, Mitsubishi president IwasakiYataro# enlisted a team of foreign experts to turn the former government facility into a world-class shipbuilding centre.These were John F.Calder, manager and superintending engineer; David F. Robertson, indoor foreman engineer; J.H. Wilson, outdoor foreman engineer; John Hill, foreman boiler- maker;William H. Devine, accountant; and George J. Mansbridge, diver and rigger.All of these men were British, a fact that in itself reflects the strong British influence in the early Japanese shipbuilding industry.IF In spite of its successes, the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. faced a major upheaval. Rivals criticized the fact that the company was free to acquire shipyards and mines while all the time enjoying a virtual monopoly in the shipping industry and receiving special treatment from high quarters.This criticism had taken on clout when an economic recession and a change in the political shape of the government rocked Japan in GNNH.The government tightened its regulations concerning subsidies to private enterprises and established the Union Transport Company (Kyo#do# Unyu Kaisha) to placate Mitsubishi’s foes and to cancel the company’s monopoly. The Union Transport Co. began operation in January GNNI in direct competition with Mitsubishi. A fierce struggle erupted between the two companies, escalating to the point that fares were reduced by as much as OF% and some of the ships strained so hard to outstrip their rivals that they arrived in port with their funnels glowing bright red or collided with each other while struggling for choice anchorages. Distress over this situation was too much for Iwasaki Yataro#. The Mitsubishi founder died of stomach cancer on M February GNNK, shortly after his fiftieth birthday,leaving the reins of the company to his younger brother Yanosuke. The intense competition between the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. and Union Transport Co. finally ended in September GNNK when the Meiji Government ordered the two companies to merge and form a new organization called NipponYu#sen Kaisha (NYK).IG The merger supposedly spelled the demise of both the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. and the Union Transport Co., but
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in reality the death toll rang only for the latter company: Mitsubishi changed it name to ‘Mitsubishi-sha’ (Mitsubishi Company) and continued its expansion in the industrial, commercial and banking sectors, while all the time exerting a strong influence over the affairs of NYK. The first iron ship constructed entirely at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard was the Yu#gao-maru, a HFL-tonne vessel slated for use as a passenger carrier between Nagasaki and Takashima and launched from the ways on HK February GNNM. Present at the launching ceremony was Iwasaki Yanosuke, president of Mitsubishi Company,andThomas B. Glover, who by now had left the Mitsubishi Coal Office and returned to Tokyo to serve as president of the Japan Brewery Company in addition to his work as a trusted consultant to the burgeoning Mitsubishi industrial and commercial empire. Iwasaki and Glover had arrived here together on HL January to inspect the various Mitsubishi facilities and to attend the launching ceremony, Glover retiring to his bungalow on the Minamiyamate hillside and Iwasaki to Sensho#kaku, the company’s Western-style villa perched on a forested knoll above the Akunoura shipyard.IH All went well, but neither Iwasaki nor Glover – nor any of the other Japanese and foreign guests celebrating the launching of Japan’s first iron ship – could have imagined that British-Japanese relations would one day sour or that this same shipyard would produce a mammoth battleship designed specifically to crush the navies of Great Britain and the United States. The relationship of cooperation between the Mitsubishi Company and the foreign settlement unfolding in the GNNFs is further illustrated by the instalment of a private telephone line between the Mitsubishi Coal Office and the office of Holme Ringer & Co. at No. GH O¯ ura in May GNNM, presumably a measure adopted to enhance communication between the coal supplier and Holme Ringer & Co., successor to Glover & Co. and agent for a long list of foreign shipping companies using Nagasaki as a port-of-call.II The Nagasaki Foreign Settlement had already been the site of a telephone experiment that was probably the first of its kind in this country.In May GNMN, only two years after Alexander Graham Bell’s epoch-making conversation with his assistant Mr Watson and less than a year since the formation of the BellTelephone Company, Norwegian merchant H.M. Fleischer installed an
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experimental line between his office in O¯ ura and the premises of the Great Northern Telegraph Company in Umegasaki. The acting Danish consul in Nagasaki, Fleischer was serving as local agent for a number of overseas shipping lines and business enterprises, including the Bell Telephone Company.The first demonstration was conducted on O May GNMN, when two groups of foreign residents assembled at the two ends of the line and gasped in astonishment at the marvel of telephone communi- cation. The editor of the English-language newspaper The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express attended the demonstration and reported the event in the newspaper. He was disappointed that the voices over the line were often feeble or totally inaudible, and he ended his article on a realistic note: As far as we can judge, the invention, though doubtless of paramount importance, is yet in its infancy and requires considerable development before [it] can come into universal use as the enforced silence, which is now necessary to hear what is spoken, cannot help mitigating against its employment in factories etc., where constant noise is going on.IJ
With subsequent technical improvements, the telephone gradually gained a role as a communication tool in government offices and the facilities of Mitsubishi Company and other leading enterprises. In fact, it showed its effectiveness so well that officialdom began to regard it with caution, especially after the promulgation of the Peace Preservation Law in December GNNM, a measure taken by the Meiji Government to crack down on political dissent and international intrigue. In October GNNN, Holme Ringer & Co. moved its headquarters to the Western- style building at No. M O¯ ura used previously as the Alt & Co. office and more recently as the Chinese Consulate. Frederick Ringer applied to Nagasaki Prefecture for re-instalment of the telephone line from the new premises at No. M O¯ ura to the Mitsubishi Coal Office, only to have the application refused. Ringer’s subsequent complaint to the British Consul started an exchange of assertions and fuzzy answers between the consul and the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture that continued until Iwasaki Yanosuke, through his representative Yamawaki Masakatsu (manager of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard), expressed personal assurances and support regarding the application.The governor informed British Consul J.J. Quin that the Meiji
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Government had finally granted permission for the instalment of the telephone line on HF May GNNO.IK Again, it was the relation- ship of international cooperation in Nagasaki that won the day. In GNOF, still another private telephone line won government approval, this time a short line of only sixty-three metres between the Mitsubishi Coal Office and the Nagasaki Steam Roller Flour Mill, an automated factory established the previous year by Holme Ringer & Co. on the adjacent lot at No. JO Sagarimatsu.IL In addition to telephones, the three-storey brick factory building featured state-of-the-art equipment including a plant imported from England and an engine and boiler built at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. Capable of producing about one tonne of high-grade flour per hour, the mill operated under the supervision of G.H. Ackermann, an expert despatched to Nagasaki by the British company providing the plant. The machinery was set in motion on GM December GNNO by Frederick Ringer’s wife Carolina in the presence of a large number of invited guests including Kusaka Yoshio, the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture who only a few months earlier had been caught in the middle of a squabble over telephone lines. The flour mill symbolized a new era of Japanese-foreign cooperation in promoting the economy of Nagasaki and implementing modern technology in Japanese industry. A correspondent from the Shanghai newspaper The North China Daily News visited the mill in GNOH and wrote a long article on the mechanisms of the plant and the quality of its product, commenting on the significance for Nagasaki as follows: The ordinary pleasure-seeking traveller who passes through Nagasaki usually associates that place with coals. He probably sees the harbour full of steamers of all sorts which are loading coal for freight or taking in a supply for the bunkers, and so far as he can see this is the sole business done at the picturesque port in Japan … It comes as a pleasant surprise, therefore, to the visitor who is trying to pass without weariness a few hours at Nagasaki, during his enforced detention there en route for other parts of Japan, to learn that there is an establishment in the port which is very well worth visiting, and that the detailed working of it is interesting in the extreme.This is the Steam Roller Flour Mill which has been running now for two years, being the only mill of the kind east of Penang … The mill is lightened by electric light, generated from a dynamo on the premises, and work is kept up continuously for GN hours a day.The flour is made from Japanese wheat only, and is
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remarkable for its strength and for the sweet and excellent bread that results from its use. Experience has proved that the most excellent bread is made from a mixture of Californian (Sperry) and Nagasaki flour … The proprietors of the Nagasaki Mill declare that travellers passing through or staying at that port, who have tasted bread so made, assert that nowhere outside of Paris or Vienna do they find the bread so good.The French fleet uses the Nagasaki flour, which in itself is no slight recommendation …IM
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Japanese Wives in Fiction and Real Life
ONEOFTHE first vessels to visit the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard after it was leased to the company by the Japanese Government was the French man-of-war Triomphante, which arrived here on O July HOOL and underwent repairs at the dock for a period of about one month.H Upon arrival, the K,HNM-tonne frigate was by far the largest ship in the harbour.The runners-up were the I,JOG-tonne British corvette Champion and the I,JGG-tonne American frigate Trenton, the latter still decked out in banners from its celebration of Independence Day four days earlier.The harbour was scattered with water-going vessels of every size and shape: steamships plying the regular routes linking Japanese, Chinese and Korean ports;Austrian, British and Russian gunboats flying flags of the respective countries; transports, tugs, coal barges, lighters and junks in various states of repair; and hundreds of single-oar sampans ferrying passengers back and forth from the landing steps in front of the custom jetties. The city of Nagasaki stretched back from the waterfront, to the south the brick and stone buildings of the foreign settlement and
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the houses of wealthy foreign residents hidden among trees on the hillsides, and to the north at the head of the bay, the artificial delta of Nakashima River and a low grid-work of wooden buildings stretching up to a row of Buddhist temples skirting the hillsides.Although the chonmage topknots and samurai swords of old were gone, most of the Japanese people walking in the streets wore traditional dress, lived in houses that dated back to the days before the opening of the port, cooked food with firewood in earthen kitchen kamado stoves, illuminated rooms with vegetable oil lamps, and enjoyed the same familiar Nagasaki diet of Japanese cuisine spiced with Chinese, Portuguese and Dutch influences. There were no telephone poles, no modern vehicles (other than rickshaws with bicycle wheels), no significant military presence, and still very few artifacts of glass or steel or concrete to mar the historic townscape. In short, aside from the foreign settlement and its Western-style buildings in the southern suburb, the lifestyles of the citizens of Nagasaki and the physical appearance of their city remained remarkably unchanged since the sunset years of the Edo Period. Among the officers standing on the bridge of the Triomphante was a thirty-five year-old lieutenant named Julien Marie Viaud, a native of the seaside town of Rochefort southwest of Paris better known by his pen name ‘Pierre Loti’. By the time of his visit to Nagasaki, Loti had already published several autobiographical travelogue-novels, such as Aziyadé, about a romantic exploit in Turkey,and Le Mariage de Loti, a story based on a stay in Tahiti.As the two names indicate, the Frenchman was leading parallel lives as a navy lieutenant serving his country on the world’s oceans and an author enjoying acclaim for his keen powers of observation, his gift for poetic turn of phrase, and his talent for smuggling himself into the bosom of exotic faraway lands. When the Triomphante dropped anchor in Nagasaki Harbour, he was already gathering material for a book entitled Madame Chrysanthème that would soar to the top of bestseller lists after publication in Paris two years later, make Nagasaki famous, and set the stage for Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly.I In the book, Loti notes with disdain the harbour laden with nondescript foreign ships and laments that, ‘Someday, when man shall have made all things alike, the earth will be a dull, tedious dwelling-place, and we shall have even to give up travelling and seeking for a change which shall no longer be found.’Then he
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mentions the foreign settlement in passing and reveals his plan for the Nagasaki visit: Consular residences, custom-house offices, manufactories; a dry dock in which a Russian frigate was lying; on the heights the large European concession, sprinkled with villas, and on the quays, American bars for the sailors. Further off, it is true, further off, far away behind these common-place objects, in the very depths of the immense green valley, peered thousands upon thousands of tiny black houses, a tangled mass of curious appearance, from which here and there emerged some higher, dark red, painted roofs, probably the true old Japanese Nagasaki which still exists. And in those quarters, who knows, there may be, lurking behind a paper screen, some affected cat’s-eyed little woman, whom perhaps in two or three days (having no time to lose) I shall marry!! Loti had heard about Nagasaki’s unique system of prostitution and the custom of ‘Japanese marriage’ from other navy officers, and he lost no time in engaging a rickshaw driver to carry him to an establishment called the ‘Garden-of-Flowers’ where he thought he could make the necessary arrangements.About this place he says: Many of my friends had, on their return home from that country, told me about it, and I knew a great deal; the Garden of Flowers is a tea-house, an elegant rendezvous.There, I would inquire for a certain Kangourou-San, who is at the same time interpreter, washerman, and confidential agent for the intercourse of races. Although Loti uses it as a man’s name, Kangourou (‘Kangoro’, sometimes corrupted as ‘Kangaroo’) was actually a generic appellation used by foreigners to refer to the Japanese pimps who made arrangements for liaisons with Japanese women and whose role in the ‘intercourse of races’ harked back to the days of the Dutch sojourn on Dejima.The word itself was relatively new, being derived from ‘Gankiro’, the name of a brothel catering to foreigners in theYokohama entertainment quarter. After meeting Loti at the Garden-of-Flowers, Kangourou agrees to introduce him to a ‘very pretty girl of about fifteen’ named Jasmine, who is living with her parents in the neighbour- hood of Diou-djen-dji (Ju zenji) and who can be engaged ‘for about eighteen or twentȳ dollars a month, on condition of presenting her with a few dresses of the best fashion, and of lodging her in a pleasant and well-situated house, – all of which a man of gallantry like myself could not fail to do’. Ju zenji, named ̄ HHK 06 Chapter:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:33 Page 115
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after a defunct Buddhist temple, was originally a stretch of wooded hillside, its most significant landmark being the horse- path leading out of Nagasaki towards Fukahori and other villages on the Nagasaki Peninsula.After the opening of Nagasaki as a treaty port in HOLP, the area had undergone rapid urbanization because of its location between the Japanese town and former Chinese Quarter on one side and the foreign settlement and international waterfront on the other. By the time of Loti’s visit it had developed into a densely populated mosaic of wooden houses, shrines and workingman’s taverns pressing together across tiny walled-in gardens and narrow flagstone lanes and stairways. Three days later, Loti has rented a house in the Ju zenji neighbourhood near the foreign settlement and is waiting therē for the arrival of Kangourou and Jasmine. Watching from a second-floor veranda, he describes in detail how the girl ascends the path with a number of other people and how she receives final touches to her kimono and hair outside:‘Her dress is of pearl-grey silk, her obi (sash) of mauve satin; a sprig of silver flowers quivers in her hair; a parting ray of sunlight touches the little figure; five or six persons accompany her. Yes! It is undoubtedly Mdlle. Jasmine; they are bringing me my fiancée!’ This scene of the wife-prostitute and her entourage arriving at the foreign patron’s house is repeated verbatim in the first act of the opera Madame Butterfly. Arrogance and mockery ooze from the French author’s account of his embarrassment at engaging in ritual bows with Jasmin’s companions when they enter the house and, after seeing the girl up close, his efforts to explain to Kangourou that he does not want her because she is too young. Seeing the disappointment of the accompanying women, whom he assumes are Jasmin’s mother and aunts, Loti says: I feel really almost sorry for them; the fact is, that for women who, not to put too fine a point on it,have come to sell a child,they have an air I was not prepared for: I can hardly say an air of respectability (a word in use with us, which is absolutely without meaning in Japan), but an air of unconscious and good-natured simplicity; they are accomplishing an act perfectly admissible in their world, and really it all resembles, more than I could have thought possible, a bonafide marriage. In the midst of the confusion, Loti notices another girl sitting in the background and asks Kangourou who she might be,
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whereupon the pimp introduces her as ‘Mdlle. Chrysanthème’ and makes her stand up for the Frenchman’s perusal, assuring him that, although she is attending merely as a spectator, she is just as available as the other girl because ‘she is not married’.After a discussion with the girl’s parents, Kangourou tells Loti that they will agree to ‘give her up for twenty dollars a month, the same price as Mdlle. Jasmine’. Loti devotes the rest of the book to a description of his ‘married life’ with Chrysanthème in the house at Ju zenji and his experiences in Nagasaki, everything from excursions̄ to markets, shrines and teahouses to funeral processions, mosquito nets, outdoor bath tubs, and the drone of cicadas reverberating in the summer air. Readers turn the pages relishing the portrait of an exotic faraway place but still hope for some expression of affection or erotic attraction between the French lieutenant and his Japanese consort. In the end, however, their expectations are rewarded only with mockery, chauvinism and indifference. Not surprisingly,the French author loses interest in his ‘mousmé’J and tires of the game of play-house in Nagasaki. His last words to Chrysanthème before boarding the Triomphante and steaming out of Nagasaki Harbour are: Well little mousmé, let us part good friends; one last kiss even, if you like. I took you to amuse me; you have not perhaps succeeded very well, but after all you have done what you could: given me your little face, your little curtseys, your little music; in short, you have been pleasant enough in your Japanese way.And who knows, perchance I may yet think of you sometimes when I recall this glorious summer, these pretty quaint gardens, and the ceaseless concert of the cicalas. Loti says that his encounter with a prostitute in Nagasaki ‘resembled’ marriage, and all he is doing when he refers to his ‘married life’ and uses the honorific prefix ‘madame’ reserved for married women is lampooning Nagasaki’s unique system of prostitution. Some readers however failed to get the joke, and the misinterpretation surfaced in a number of other books until finding its ultimate expression in the opera Madame Butterfly. World traveller Katherine S. Baxter, for example, mentions Loti as follows in her description of the scenery of Nagasaki after a visit here in the early HOPGs:‘Madame Chrysanthème and the cottage where she resided with her French husband were not en evidence; but Pierre Loti’s charming sketch made the whole environment
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seem strangely familiar.’K Note that she uses the word ‘husband’ without any hint of irony.In another book published in the wake of Madame Chrysanthème, British writer Albert Tracy informs readers, straight-faced, that the temporary relationships between foreign men and Japanese women are legal unions in the eyes of Japanese law: Every foreigner engaged in commercial pursuits is expected, if he has no family at home, to take a Japanese wife. I say ‘wife’ because, as in the State of NewYork,no religious ceremony is necessary to make the relation quite legal, according to Japanese law. But supposing the merchant retires from business? Then he ‘divorces’ his wife; provides for her future, and that of her children, if she has any; and sails away to European respectability. Sometimes he departs without making any provision for his offspring, and leaving the mother to poverty.L Many cases of abandonment undoubtedly occurred, but they were immoral if not illegal from any point of view. Most of the sad tales of heartbreak in old Nagasaki are lost in the dark waters of unrecorded history, but one is alluded to in the English- language newspapers of the foreign settlement. In HONM, nine years before Loti’s visit, The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express reported that W.L.Malcolmson, a former Scottish resident of this port, had given a course of lectures in Aberdeen on ‘The Commercial Morality of Japan’. The tone of the article is rather caustic, suggesting that the writer and his readers shared some other less flattering knowledge about Malcolmson.This is clarified by a short article in the next issue of the newspaper, in which the editor takes his gloves off and writes: A prominent statesman once said that in this world cheek is everything. Could imagination depict anything more barefaced or smelling more savourly of genuine audacity than W.L.Malcolmson, late of Japan, lecturing before an AberdeenYoung Men’s Christian Association.The Eastern career of this moralizing lecturer was that of an unscrupulous adventurer, deliberately deceiving his best friends and stealthily fleeing this country with innumerable unpaid debts. It is but justice that our Aberdeen friends should know these facts, and we would suggest that the proceeds of the lectures should be remitted to Nagasaki for the support of his forsaken Japanese wife and children.M Just as the great distance between Japan and Scotland allowed Malcolmson to make a clean break, most readers of Madame
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Chrysanthème were willing to suspend moral judgement because of the enormous geographical and cultural gap separating Europe and Japan at the time. However, the downside of the great popularity of Madame Chrysanthème – it shot to the top of best- seller lists and appeared in dozens of editions in various languages – is the fact that the scenes of Nagasaki in HOOL became lodged in the Western consciousness like images captured in photographs, forever unchanging despite the evolution of the subject in real life, and that Pierre Loti’s blanket condemnation of Japanese modernization and belittling of Japanese people continued to inform European attitudes in later decades, even when Japan reached a level of industrial and military strength that rivalled that of Britain, Russia and Loti’s own France. The image of Japanese women created by Pierre Loti, not to mention the sad example set by the likes of W.L.Malcolmson, was also a nuisance to responsible foreign residents of Japan who shared relationships of commitment with Japanese women.As Loti’s story indicates, illicit relationships between Japanese women and foreign men were still common in the HOOGs, but bona fide international marriages had increased significantly since receiving government approval in March HONJ, and families with one foreign and one Japanese parent were anything but rare in Nagasaki and the other treaty ports. In its HN May HONJ issue, The Nagasaki Express announced the impending marriage of a Chinese resident of Nagasaki and a Japanese woman named Omio (actually Mio, the ‘O’ being an honorific): A Cantonese Celestial, named Sewnang, who is connected with Messrs Ceaupseng & Co, General Store-Keepers in the settlement, has applied to the native authorities at this port for permission to enter into a matrimonial alliance with a Japanese young lady, named Omio, who belongs to Saga. No reply will be given until the Saga authorities have been communicated with, but it is expected that permission will be granted to enable this interesting event to take place. The marriage of Sewnang and Omio was ‘interesting’ in that it came only a few weeks after the government sanction of international marriage and therefore signified one of the first legal marital unions formed by a Japanese person and a foreigner. Over the following months and years the newspapers of Nagasaki announced many other international marriages. When Norwegian resident Hans Petersen married a Japanese woman named Inosuki
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Matsu of Amakusa, Kumamoto Prefecture, in January HONK, the newspapers informed readers that the ceremony had been conducted by Henry Stout, Nagasaki’s leading missionary of the Reformed Church in America, evidence enough that a majority of residents blessed the marriage and viewed it as ‘legal’.N Whether officially married or not, a large number of mixed race couples lived in Nagasaki over the years and engaged in permanent relationships, playing a vital if inconspicuous role in the social affairs of the foreign settlement and in interaction between the foreign and Japanese communities. One was Briton Simeon F.Lawrence and his Japanese wife Yoshi. Lawrence came to Japan in the early HOMGs as a British army sergeant and, after discharge, was engaged as constable at the British consulate in Hakodate, a position that he held for thirteen years. He came to Nagasaki in HONP, accompanied byYoshi whom he had met and married in Hakodate, to assume the same position at the British Consulate in this port. He served here continuously until retiring in HOPO, winning such respect that the consul at the time showered him with praise in a letter to the British Minister and recommended a generous pension. He died of heart disease in HPGI; his widow, who survived him by ten years, lived alone in the family house in the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Simeon andYoshi are buried together under a single gravestone at Sakamoto International Cemetery.O This cemetery, which served the foreign community of Nagasaki from HOOO to the post-war period, is today scattered with headstones marking the graves of former foreign residents who married Japanese women and lived here for as long as forty or fifty years. One belongs to Marcel Giroit, a French resident who died in Nagasaki in HPMJ at the age of seventy-three, and his Japanese wife Kuni, who erected the gravestone for her husband and was buried here with him when she died in HPNP at the age of eighty-one.While the epitaphs on most of the headstones feature short poems or religious platitudes, the one that Kuni built for her husband is inscribed with a touchingly personal message in French: Je suis là avec vous. Je vous aime. (‘I am here with you. I love you’.) The ‘Register of Foreign Marriages’ kept by the Nagasaki British Consulate from HPII to HPKG is another reliable document shedding light on some of the international marriages formalized in Nagasaki.P This shows a total of sixteen marriages, five of which were consummated by a British man and a Japanese
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woman. Not a single marriage between a Japanese man and British woman is recorded, a disparity that, although due in part to the difference between the Japanese and British systems of registration, reflects the preponderance of liaisons between foreign men and Japanese women. Still further information about bonafide international marriages concluded in Nagasaki can be found in Naigaijin kyokon jinmeibo (‘List of Names of Japanese and Foreigners Permitted to Marry’), a register kept by the Foreign Affairs Division, Nagasaki Prefecture from September HONJ to March HOPO, that is, most of the interval between the government sanction and the abolition of the foreign settlements as official entities.HG The first of the forty-eight marriages entered in this register is that of Tan Ben Tek, a British subject hailing from Singapore who married a Japanese woman named Isobe Wai on JG September HONJ. Another is that of Wilson Walker’s younger brother Robert N. Walker and a Japanese woman named Fukuda Sato. After obtaining his captain’s licence from the Japanese government in HONM, Robert N.Walker served as commander of the Heian-maru and assisted in the government effort to quash the Satsuma Rebellion. In HONO, he fathered a daughter, named Annie, and began a new life, balancing the duties of steamship captain and the responsibilities of a family man. The mother was a twenty-year-old Japanese woman named Fukuda Sato. Three more children followed, a second daughter named Margaret and two sons, John and Robert Jr., all born in the Kobe Foreign Settlement where the family resided.According to the Naigaijin kyokon jinmeibo, Sato was the eldest daughter of Fukuda Moheiji of Shinagawa. Nothing is known about Fukuda Moheiji’s occupation or the nature of his daughter’s first encounter with Robert N.Walker, but the fact that Shinagawa, the first post town west of Tokyo on the old Tokaido Highway and the city’s principal ocean harbour, served as a port for the despatch of government troops and ships to the Kyushu battlefields during the Satsuma Rebellion suggests that the family was involved in some way with the accommodation or entertainment of the Mitsubishi steamship crews. In HOOH, Robert was appointed to command the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co.’s Hyo#go-maru, a H,LGG-tonne steamer serving the regular routes between Japan and Korea. In March HOOM, he received orders to take over the Takachiho-maru, a British-built
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iron screw steamer slated for use on the newly established Nagasaki –Vladivostok line.At this juncture, Robert, Sato and their four children moved to Nagasaki from Kobe and took up residence in the brick bungalow at No. JH Minamiyamate, a lot high on the hillside at the southern end of the foreign settlement commanding a panoramic view of the harbour.The information in the Naigaijin kyokon jinmeibo indicates that Robert and Sato registered the marriage soon after their arrival in Nagasaki, or eight years after the birth of their first child.The reason for the delay is unclear, but it is likely that the couple wanted to dodge prejudice in the foreign settlement and to ensure that their children were welcomed into the community on an equal footing with their British peers. Nagasaki was now a regular port-of-call for steamships and men-of-war plying the maritime routes between Japan and the continent, and the foreign settlement was firmly ensconced in its role as a gateway and clearing house, with a score of foreign-run agencies issuing tickets, arranging for the landing and loading of cargo, and mobilizing hundreds of Japanese companies to handle various aspects of the work. Over the next few years Robert N. Walker established a reputation as a competent captain and leading member of the foreign community in Nagasaki.While guiding the Takachiho-maru on the regular run from Nagasaki to Pusan, Korea, once a week – and on toVladivostok in April when the ice in that harbour broke – he served as a member of the Nagasaki Club and the English Church Committee and participated in all the social events on the Nagasaki calendar. Sato gave birth to three more daughters, named Kitty, Maude and Violet, bringing the total to seven.Walker was at the height of his career, but it was a height from which he would soon tumble, suddenly and irrevocably. On the evening of HG May HOPH, the Takachiho-maru left Nagasaki on its regular voyage toVladivostok.As usual, Captain Walker took a bearing near Takashima and set the course and speed in such a way as to pass the southwest shore ofTsushima around daybreak.Tsushima is a cluster of islands lying like a wave breaker between Japan and Korea. The subsequent events are reported in detail in The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express and other newspapers of the time.Walker left the wheel in charge of the third officer and retired to his cabin with orders to be awakened at K.JG a.m.While he slept, a blanket of clouds drifted
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across the night sky and fog began to roll in over the ocean and to reduce visibility.The third officer went to the captain’s cabin around I.GG a.m. to tell him about the change in the weather. Walker told him to maintain the same course and, again, to awaken him at K.JG. CaptainWalker was still in his cabin at L.JG when the black hull of the Takachiho-maru hit a reef at Tsutsuzaki, a jagged finger of rock at the southwestern tip of the island.The damage was slight enough to allow the passengers to gather their things together in good order and to board the lifeboats and the fishing boats that had come out to the scene of the accident.The mail bags, money and most of the cargo were also rescued before the ship settled onto a bed of rocks. After ensuring that his passengers and the mail and money had been safely conveyed to Nagasaki on another NYK ship,Walker spent day after day working with teams of labourers in the attempt to float the ship, but the rainy season soon set in, and gales and heavy rain dashed his hopes. In late July he left the scene and proceeded directly to Tokyo to be present at the court of inquiry to be held there to determine the causes of the accident. NYK posted an advertisement in newspapers inviting offers for the purchase of the Takachiho-maru ‘as she now lies stranded at Tsushima’.HH At the court of inquiry held in two sessions in August HOPH, Captain Walker, Chief Officer Howard and some of the crew members recalled the events leading up to the grounding of the ship. One source of contention was the question of whether or not Howard – who had joined the Takachiho-maru crew on the previous voyage and taken over for the third officer on the night of the accident – had awakened the captain properly at the instructed hour of K.JG a.m.The court decision, announced at the Marine Bureau of the Communications Department on HN August HOPH, declared the chief officer responsible for the accident and gave him a three-month suspension, but it also found Captain Walker guilty of neglect of duty as commander of the ill-fated vessel and suspended his licence for six months. By this time the pounding surf and churning currents off the coast of Tsushima had eliminated all hopes to re-float the ship. Just before the accident faded from the focus of public interest, the editor of The JapanWeekly Mail inYokohama issued a final word on the subject:
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The Chief Officer’s ideas of duty were utterly defective indeed, and to him belongs the greater blame. But, on the other hand, was it not the Captain’s business to appraise the men under his command and to modify his orders accordingly; and further, did not the difficulty of awakening him indicate a mood of security almost amounting to carelessness? A Marine Court is unfortunately bound to err on the side of severity: its findings affect the safety of lives and property.The victims of this necessity are to be sincerely pitied, especially when they are men of such a record and so universally esteemed and liked as is the late Master of the Takachiho Maru.HI The anguish experienced by Captain Walker and his family as a result of the court decision is indicated by the fact that Sato packed up all the family belongings and, with her seven children and a maid in tow, left Nagasaki forYokohama only one week after the announcement. It is also indicated by the advertisement published a few days later in the Nagasaki newspapers putting the house at No. JH Minamiyamate up for sale.HJ Walker’s reaction seems somewhat exaggerated in retrospect. There is no evidence to show that NYK fired or even penalized him for the accident, and as it turned out he stayed in Yokohama well beyond the six-month duration of the suspension and presumably could have returned to his former post if he had chosen to do so. On IG October HOPI, Robert, Sato and their eight children – their third son Wilson had been born in Yokohama the previous year – boarded the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) steamship Empress of Japan leaving Yokohama for Vancouver.HK From Vancouver, the family apparently took the recently completed transcontinental railway and reached England by Christmas. Robert was seeing Maryport and reuniting with his father for the first time in eighteen years, and he undoubtedly relished the moment as a glorious homecoming after all his adventures at sea, his promotion to master mariner and involvement in the development of Japanese shipping, and his success as both a family man and a gentleman of secure financial standing.WilliamWalker probably greeted his son with open arms and welcomed Sato and her children into the clan, hailing a new era of family prosperity. Robert’s father and brother were operating a ship chandler’s business and commission agency on the Maryport waterfront and would soon purchase the shipbuilding yard of Ritson & Sons, the largest in the port. Robert may have joined them in this
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enterprise, but he does not seem to have realized the bright hopes that had illuminated his homecoming. He and his wife Sato and eight children took up lodgings in a small house on High Street squeezed in a row of stucco buildings, with one tiny window in the rear looking over the roof of a pub aptly called ‘Sailor’s Return’.This was quite a contrast to the spacious tree-shaded home in Nagasaki with its team of servants and panoramic view of the harbour and surrounding mountains. Sato barely had time to adjust to her new environment when she became pregnant with her ninth and last child, a girl named Gladys who was born in the High Street house in December HOPJ. Sato fell ill the following spring and died in the arms of her husband and children on II May HOPK, still only thirty-six years old. Her obituary in the local newspaper says simply: ‘[Died] At PO High Street, Maryport, on May IInd, HOPK, Sato Walker, beloved wife of Capt. R.N. Walker (late of Nippon Yusen Kaisha), aged JM years.’HL Although the only other source of information about this tragic event is the death certificate preserved in Maryport city archives –adocument that attributes the young mother’s demise to ‘heart disease and general dropsy’–Sato’s condition was undoubtedly aggravated by the trauma of being pulled out of her happy life in Nagasaki, by the exertion and anxiety of a journey half-way round the world, by the inability to comfort her husband in his disappointment and resentment, and by the difficulty of raising nine children of mixed parentage in a northern English town where few if any Japanese people had ever set foot before. Today, Maryport has fallen into quiet anonymity, its harbour frequented mostly by pleasure craft and its once bustling shipyards gone, but the ‘Sailor’s Return’ pub continues its lonesome wait at the waterfront for the town’s long-lost sons.The house on High Street is also intact, its drab appearance and tiny proportions speaking silently of the sunken spirits of a grounded mariner and the dilemma of a large family torn between two cultures. Sato’s red granite gravestone, remarkably new-looking despite the passage of a century, is intact in Maryport Cemetery, overlooking the windswept grayness of the Irish Sea. Robert N.Walker may have been standing here when, shortly after the death of his wife, he resolved to return to Japan and to seek new opportunities in her homeland. In contrast to the turbulence experienced by his brother, Wilson Walker enjoyed mostly smooth sailing, rising to ever
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greater distinctions as the superintending captain of the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. and a key adviser in the company’s efforts to dominate the shipping lines connecting Japan with the continent. In HOOG, he married Charlotte Noordhoek Hegt, the Dutch-born daughter of a prominent Yokohama entrepreneur named J.B. Noordhoek Hegt, and took up residence in the Yokohama Foreign Settlement. Just when the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. was transforming into NipponYu#sen Kaisha (NYK) in HOOL, he also participated as leading stockholder in the formation of the Japan Brewery Company, a project in which his friends Thomas Glover and Mitsubishi president Iwasaki Yanosuke were intimately involved.HM Wilson Walker’s last major task before retiring from NYK was to travel to Scotland to take charge of a new ship called the Saikyo#-maru constructed by the London & Glasgow Engineering & Iron Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. on the River Clyde. NYK had ordered this ship and its sister vessel the Kobe-maru soon after the formation of the company as part of plans to expand the corporate fleet.With a gross tonnage of nearly J,GGG tonnes and luxurious facilities for JKH passengers, it was a state-of-the-art product of the British shipbuilding industry and the finest vessel ever to join the ranks of Japanese merchantmen. It was probably also the first European-built ship to boast cross-cultural amenities like separate Western-style and Japanese-style washrooms.HN Walker sailed the Saikyo#-maru back to Japan, following the same route as the one he had taken in the Niigata-maru a decade earlier. He arrived in Nagasaki on O August HOOO and within a few weeks was commanding the new ship on theYokohama - Shanghai line. The summer of the following year marked a dramatic change for the Walker family.Wilson submitted his resignation to NYK after accepting an offer from the Japan Brewery Company to serve as the company’s full-time secretary.The Saikyo#-maru made the last voyage under his command in July HOOP, and before the trees on the Yokohama hillsides had turned red he had hung up his captain’s binoculars and settled into a new life as a company administrator. The Japan Brewery Company constructed a grand red-brick building in Yokohama and imported a set of brewing tanks from Germany. The new facilities reached completion soon after Wilson Walker’s appointment as secretary, and the company product, ‘Kirin Beer’, caught the Japanese imagination so
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powerfully that the brewers had to work on twenty-four-hour shifts to keep up with the demand. Despite the company’s great success, however,Wilson submitted his resignation in March HOPJ. His wife Charlotte explains the circumstances as follows in a memoir written late in life: When the children reached an age for school, we decided to go to England … We booked passages aboard the Canadian Pacific Mail Liner ‘Empress of Japan’ en route to Shanghai on her maiden voyage. At that time a financial crisis was affecting the whole world. Banks went smash, and through the failure of the O.B.C. and Bank of China, where we had our money, we were almost penniless.The trip to England was cancelled and we started all over again … My husband was fortunate in passing his examinations and securing the post of Inland Sea Pilot through the kindness of Baron IwasakiYanoski [sic], the Head of the Mitsu Bishi S.S.C. for whom my husband worked for many years. Later we had to move to Kobe and I was absolutely heartbroken, leaving dear old Yokohama, my family and numerous friends. Ill luck followed us there.We lived in a house where three deaths of typhoid pneumonia had been recorded.After a few weeks three of my children were taken ill of the same complaint … Things were in a fearful state. I lost my baby-boy Willie at the age of I years and I months … from the disease. One of my twins, Lily,was at death’s door … After the recovery of my children, we all went to Nagasaki for a change. I liked it so much better there that I persuaded my husband to move over entirely.HO The passenger lists printed in the English-language newspapers of the time corroborate Charlotte’s account, showing that Wilson Walker began to commute between Kobe and Nagasaki in the spring of HOPJ. He worked on a freelance basis for NYK and foreign shipping companies like CPR and the Occidental & Oriental Steamship Co., meeting their large ocean going vessels at Nagasaki and piloting them to Kobe.The role of pilot was an important one in the Seto Inland Sea, a protected but treacherous stretch of saltwater created by some prehistoric convulsion of the earth that tore Shikoku Island off the coast of Honshu and left thousands of islands, hidden rocks and jutting capes in the aftermath. Great advances had been made in the Japanese shipping industry and NYK was quickly earning a global reputation, but the waters in and around Japan’s international ports were still supervised by foreign captains and most of the rudders on ocean-going ships guided by foreign hands.
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Wilson Walker acquiesced to his wife’s entreaties and settled in Nagasaki.The family of seven arrived here in late November HOPJ and took up residence at No. HI Minamiyamate, a large two- storey house with lawns enclosed by brick walls, fireplaces in each room, bay windows and a wide second-floor veranda that provided a panoramic view over Nagasaki Harbour.The house faced a flagstone-paved incline leading from the Bund up to the gate of O¯ ura Catholic Church and beyond it the stairs to the posh residences on the Minamiyamate hillside. Nestled in a grove of trees directly across the path from the house was the BelleVue Hotel, the hostelry of choice for foreign visitors arriving on the Bund. In the summer of HOPK, Nagasaki enjoyed a sudden boost when Japan’s first major international war filled the harbour with steamships and men-of-war and catapulted the city into an unprecedented period of growth.The Meiji Government had succeeded in concluding a treaty with the reclusive kingdom of Korea in HONM and opening the port of Pusan for trade.This broke Korea’s shell of isolation, but it put Japan on a collision course with China because the latter continued to look at Korea as a vassal state.The catalyst for direct armed conflict came in the form of a peasant uprising by the Tonghak cult, a conservative religious group trying to prevent the influence of Christianity in Korea.When the uprising exploded into a massive rebellion in early HOPK, the Korean king turned to China for military assistance. Japan also sent troops, but the main purpose was not to disarm the Tonghaks – a task already accomplished by the time the Japanese soldiers arrived – but to drive the Chinese out of Korea and to finally resolve the question of Korea’s international alignment. Just before the official declaration of war,Wilson and Charlotte Walker received the news that Wilson’s sister,Ann, the wife of former NYK employee W.H.Talbot, was dying of tuberculosis in Shanghai. Charlotte left Nagasaki with her children and reached her sister-in-law’s bedside in time to bid her farewell, but the family had little time to mourn because the conflict between Japan and China was mounting and rumours of warfare and the suspension of steamship service were darting around Shanghai. Charlotte beat a hasty retreat to Nagasaki with her five children and five nieces and nephews on a NYK steamship. She describes the withdrawal from Shanghai in her memoir:
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I right away booked passage to return to Nagasaki. I was fortunate to secure room in the only Japanese steamer leaving.With my brother-in-law’s help, I managed to take his L children as well as my own L aboard just in time before she sailed. It was a dreadful trip. Every port-hole was closed and covered with tin as they expected heavy firing from Woosung and nobody was allowed on deck. One shot just missed the bow, a second brought down a piece of the top mast and a third made a hole in the funnel.We arrived at Nagasaki at I a.m.With my large family we filled two sampans.
After the declaration of war, the Japanese forces won one decisive battle after another, quickly routing the Chinese on land at Pyongyang and seizing the strategically important town of Port Arthur (Lushun) at the southern tip of the Liaodong Peninsula. Japan’s British-trained naval forces and British-built warships, tested for the first time in mortal combat, also proved far superior to those of the Chinese at the battle of the Yalu River in September HOPK and other encounters at sea. Just as its predecessor the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. had provided ships for the Taiwan Expedition, NYK suspended most of its business activities during the Sino-Japanese War, donated steamships for the war effort and paid bonuses to the captains steaming into the war zone. The outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War had a devastating effect on the Chinese community of Nagasaki and its relationship of cooperation with its Japanese neighbours dating back to the earliest days of the port.The doors and windows of Chinese businesses were boarded up, the traffic in ships between the two countries came to a halt, officials at the Chinese Consulate at No. IO¯ ura lowered the national flag, and Chinese families paid final respects to their ancestral graves at So#fukuji, Ko#fukuji and the other Chinese temples in Nagasaki. On IJ July HOPK, a fire broke out in the Shinchi neighbourhood and destroyed twenty-three houses.Another fire broke out in nearby Hirobaba on IP July, reducing twelve houses to ashes. The cause was arson; the criminal a Chinese resident who had attempted to steal valuables and gather funds for his voyage home.HP The number of Chinese residents, which totaled MHG in December HOPJ, had plummeted to IOJ by the time of the next count a year later.IG On the Japanese side, groups of right-wing youths roamed the city calling for a boycott on Chinese goods and other sanctions, while the
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governor of Nagasaki imposed restrictions on travel and ordered the registration of all Chinese people remaining in the city, creating the first prototype of Japan’s modern-day Alien Regi- stration system.IH On HN April HOPL, Japan and China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, bringing the war to an end and alerting the world to Japan’s success in the project of modernization and industrialization. The terms of the treaty included China’s recognition of Korean independence, cession of Taiwan and the Pescadores Islands to Japan, and the agreement to permit Japanese companies to operate ships on theYangtze River and establish manufacturing facilities in Shanghai and other treaty ports.These new advantages brought Japan headlong into the commercial and political maelstrom of East Asia and ensured a sharp boost in Nagasaki’s fortunes as the closest port to the continent. It also made China ever more vulnerable to colonial advances, again involving Nagasaki as a strategic port in the region. In March HOPN, seven Russian warships anchored in Nagasaki for rest and replenishment, marking the beginning of regular visits of the Russian East Asian Fleet.II The Spanish-American War and the forced cession of Philippines to the United States after Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish squadron at Manila Bay in HOPO also resulted in an increase in maritime traffic to Nagasaki. In December the following year, Major John M. Hyde and Lieutenant Elwood G. Babbitt arrived in Nagasaki from Manila and established an army depot to provide food and supplies to American forces, pay salaries, and arrange for the coaling and provision of American ships visiting the port.IJ An article reprinted from The Far East (the English-language edition of the Tokyo newspaper Kokumin-no-tomo) in The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express in April HOPM articulates the optimism beginning to bloom in this port and the anticipations of the rest of the country. Entitled ‘Nagasaki, A Rift in the Cloud’, the article is attributed to a Japanese writer going by the penname ‘Sachi’ but may have been the work of Tokutomi Soho#, the influential editor of Kokumin-no-tomo and a native of Kyushu.The article departs from the previous style of English-language newspapers in the foreign settlements in that it expresses a Japanese opinion and calls attention to historical facts of which most foreign readers were probably unaware.The author begins with a long account of the history of the city,pointing out that
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Nagasaki, the beautiful seaport on the western coast of Kiushu [sic] has witnessed many important matters which have been of great benefit to the country. For a period of JGG years, when Japan was otherwise closed to the whole world, Nagasaki, like the air tube which furnishes air to the diver far down in the deep, was the sole opening through which knowledge of the outside world found its way into the country … Thus Nagasaki was in many ways the birthplace of the modern civilization of Japan. But the greatest service she rendered the country was through the inspiration which she gave to the Restoration of HOMO.There were at that time two parties each contending for the supremacy.The one was the conservative party with its stronghold in Kyoto, and the other was the progressive party which arose in Nagasaki and exerted great influence. It was on the wharf at Nagasaki that Ito and Inouye were convinced of the folly of the anti-foreign movement. It was there that Okuma, Goto, Iwasaki and Mutsu became acquainted with the great forces of the world. It was in Nagasaki that Okuma, the best of our foreign ministers, first divined the secret of national intercourse. Hashimoto, the ablest of our physicians, first learned the elements of physiology and pathology here. It was at Nagasaki that Iwasaki, the cleverest of our merchants, had his eyes opened to the advantage of maritime commerce. The comment that Nagasaki inspired the Meiji Restoration seems to refer to Thomas Glover,William Alt,Wilson Walker and the other British residents of the foreign settlement who provided assistance to the young samurai who gathered here at the end of the Edo Period searching for new paths of progress.The author ends with a message of confidence in Nagasaki’s new role in international affairs after the Sino-Japanese War: Although the medium through which such great blessings were brought into the country, Nagasaki has fared ill since the Restoration. Her services have been forgotten and she has been left to shift for herself. But what her ungrateful people have not given her, she will in all probability gain through the political development of the country. Facing Shanghai and pointing towards Formosa, her hands will soon be full with the large share which will fall to her in the transactions resulting from our new relations with the South and West.IK One of the best vantage points in Nagasaki to observe the comings and goings of the ships frequenting Nagasaki Harbour was Higashiyamate, which like Minamiyamate had developed over the years into an elegant hillside residential district studded
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with gracious Western-style houses and tidy lawns and gardens stitched together by flagstone paths and stairs.The oldest building here was the house at No. HI Higashiyamate built by American merchant and consul John G.Walsh in the early HOMGs and later acquired by the Methodist Episcopal Church for use as a missionary residence.This wooden building, which remains to this day as a nationally designated Important Cultural Asset, was erected around the same time as the Glover and Alt houses in Minamiyamate but differs from them in several aspects, particularly the wide American-style veranda. After Walsh Hall & Co. left Nagasaki in HONK, the house was occupied by an unbroken series of American residents and even served as the American Consulate from HPGI to HPIH. In HOPI, an American missionary named Irvin Correll, who arrived in Nagasaki to assume the position of principal at the Methodist mission school Chinzei Gakuin, took up residence at No. HI Higashiyamate with his wife Jennie and children.IL Like other high-end Western-style houses in the foreign settlements of Japan, the spacious houses inhabited by mission- aries in Nagasaki were served by low-paid Japanese maids and gardeners and protected from the dusty crowds of ‘natives’ by a wall of economic advantage and by the legal and psychological buffer of extraterritoriality. Most of the students attending the mission schools were the children of either foreign residents or wealthy Japanese, the latter usually motivated more by attraction to the elite image of Western schooling than by interest in Christian teachings. The missionaries made noble efforts to promote egalitarian education and to include women in the educational process, but the assistance extended to Japanese people tended to come on the condition that the recipients subscribe to Western values and acknowledge the inferiority of their own religion and world-view.This ambivalence is illustrated by the oxymoronic title of the newsletter circulated widely in overseas missions by the Methodist Women’s Foreign Missionary Society: The HeathenWoman’s Friend. The story of the Correll family’s stay in Nagasaki would probably not have attracted special attention if not for the fact that Jennie’s younger brother, John Luther Long, published a short story entitled ‘Madame Butterfly’ in the NewYork literary journal Century Magazine in April HOPO.IM As the title indicates, the story borrows heavily from Pierre Loti’s Madame
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Chrysanthème.At the beginning of the latter, Loti is standing with Yves on the deck of the Triomphante and boasting that he will ‘marry’ as soon as he reaches Japan. Similarly, Long launches into Madame Butterfly with a short chapter in which two American navy officers, identified as Pinkerton and Sayre, are discussing the possibility of ‘marriage’ on the deck of their ship as it steams towards Nagasaki.The next thing we know,Lieutenant Pinkerton, with the help of a ‘marriage-broker’ named Goro, has married Cho-Cho-san (Miss Butterfly) and rented a house for her on a hillside overlooking Nagasaki Harbour. This mimics the temporary arrangement that Loti formed with Chrysanthème through the pimp Kangourou, but Long does not provide any information about the events leading up to it, nor does he bat a literary eye when he uses the word ‘marry’: he seems to be saying that Pinkerton and Butterfly were engaged in a legal marriage, or at least a legal marriage in Japanese eyes.As expected, however, the American lieutenant vacates his love nest as soon as his warship leaves Nagasaki, just as surely as Loti sailed away after the repaired Triomphante slid out of dry dock at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. Up to this point the plot of Madame Butterfly recapitulates that of Madame Chrysanthème, albeit without the clear use of irony in describing the ‘marriage’. Only the names have changed in the process: Loti and his friendYves become Pinkerton and Sayre, the pimp Kangourou is now Goro, the maid Oyouki is Suzuki, and the woman at the centre of the story is converted from a Chrysanthemum into a Butterfly. Despite the inklings of plagiarism, Long’s story came to the attention of David Belasco, the ‘Bishop of Broadway’, and took on a new life as a stage play in March HPGG.This impressed Italian composer Giacomo Puccini so much when he saw it in London that he set about converting it into an opera, the work of musical and dramatic charm that has enjoyed unflagging international popularity since its debut in HPGK.IN Madame Chrysanthème ends with Pierre Loti’s departure from Nagasaki, but the greater part of John Luther Long’s story is devoted to Cho-Cho-san’s long wait with her maid Suzuki and son ‘Trouble’ (born after Pinkerton’s departure) for the American lieutenant’s return.The woman with whom Loti associated in Nagasaki could not speak a word of French or English, and Loti makes no attempt to conceal the fact. He refrains from supplying her with any dialogue other than a few one-word utterances in
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Japanese, such as nezumi! (‘mouse!’) when she hears a pattering sound above the ceiling boards in the house in Ju zenji. He also admits his failure to surmount the communication̄ barrier, although he attributes this, not to his own lack of study or interest, but to the woman’s mental deficiency.John Luther Long, by contrast, had no appreciation for the language barrier because he had never been to Japan himself, let alone spent a month with a courtesan. He portrays Cho-Cho-san as the beautiful daughter of a samurai who had committed ritual suicide, saving his honour but throwing his family into poverty and giving his daughter no choice but to earn a living as a geisha. Unlike sulky, taciturn Chrysanthème, she is a vivacious chatterbox who, after Pinkerton’s departure, insists upon speaking only in English and spends day after day dancing around the house in ecstatic expectation of the American’s return. During a visit to the American Consulate, Cho-Cho-san hears from Mr. Sharpless that Pinkerton’s ship is expected in Nagasaki ‘about the first of September’. Delighted, she returns to her house and prepares for her lover’s return, gazing out over Nagasaki Harbour with a telescope.The first of September comes and goes, days pass, and finally, on HN September, she sees Pinkerton’s ship steam into the harbour and, deliriously happy,decorates the house with flowers and sits down at the sho#ji screens with Suzuki and her son, expecting him to come at any minute. But night falls and another day passes without any word from the American lieutenant.A week later, Cho-Cho-san spies him standing on the deck with a blonde-haired woman, but she remains confident that he has merely been delayed by duties and will soon come up the path to the house. She watches in disbelief the following day, however, when his warship leaves Nagasaki Harbour, and she runs to the consul to seek an explanation, unable to contain herself any longer.While she is speaking with him, the blonde woman comes into the room and asks the consul to forward a telegram. She identifies herself as Mrs Pinkerton and then reads out the telegram that she wants sent to her husband: Just saw the baby and his nurse. Can’t we have him at once. He is lovely. Shall see the mother about it to-morrow.Was not at home when I was there to-day.Expect to join you Wednesday next week per Kioto maru. May I bring him along? – Adelaide. After reciting this to the dumbfounded consul, Mrs Pinkerton notices Cho-Cho-san sitting in a chair, calls her a ‘pretty
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plaything’ and asks for a kiss.When this is refused, she laughs and says,‘Ah, well, I don’t blame you.They say you don’t do that sort of thing – to women, at any rate. I quite forgive our men for falling in love with you.’ At the end of Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème, the French lieutenant pays his consort in silver dollars and bids her farewell, but, finding that he has more time than expected, he returns to the room he had rented for her – only to find her tapping the coins with a wooden mallet to test their quality. In Madame Butterfly, by contrast, Cho-Cho-san returns heartbroken to her house and stabs herself in the neck with a short samurai sword. In an apparent fit of Christian conscience, Long does not let her succeed in the mortal sin of suicide but reports that ‘the stream [of blood] between her breasts darkened and stopped’ and that ‘the little maid came in and bound up the wound’. In their later dramatic and operatic versions of Madame Butterfly, David Belasco and Giacomo Puccini both rejected this conclusion and had the tragic heroine explicitly kill herself, knowing full well that Long’s wishy-washy portrayal would fall flat on stage. Madame Butterfly ends with the following sentence:‘When Mrs Pinkerton called the next day at the little house on Higashi Hill it was quite empty.’ ‘Higashi Hill’ can only refer to Higashiyamate, the ‘East Hillside’ of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement where the Correll family and other missionaries lived in luxurious isolation from the Japanese community. Although John Luther Long shows sympathy for the tragic heroine of his story, the missionaries in real-life Nagasaki tended to look upon Japanese prostitutes as agents of the devil and the custom of ‘Japanese marriage’ as the abomination of a pagan culture. Their persistent efforts to cut away the root of the problem, that is, to divert the attention of sailors from alcohol and sex, bore fruit in HOPM – while Irvin and Jennie Correll were still residing in Nagasaki – with the establishment of the ‘Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen’.IO When the warship USS Charleston anchored here in HOPK, a group of sailors who were also members of the Christian Endeavor Society put together the hefty sum of MLG yen as a donation towards the foundation of a seamen’s home. One of the crew members expressed his opinion of Nagasaki as follows: Nagasaki is the first city I have ever visited where I could not find a place to eat and sleep and rest when coming ashore without
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having to do so in a saloon,a gambling den,or in a house of ill repute, and that is saying a great deal, for I have spent three years in travelling in foreign lands.IP To augment the donation from the sailors, the Higashiyamate missionaries launched a fund-raising campaign among foreign residents of Nagasaki and other parts of Kyushu.The usefulness of such an institution and the motivation of the people promoting it were called to question by some sceptics, such as the writer of an article in the local English-language newspaper who sarcastically urged the missionaries to use one of their own ‘imposing and palatial residences’ as a site for the home.JG The project, however, went ahead as planned. A total of J,GGG yen was collected before the end of the year, a building was rented a No. IM ura (in the venue, ironically enough, of a former saloon), and theŌ Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen was inaugurated by a large group of missionaries and other foreign residents. The opening of the Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen in HOPM symbolized the transformation of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement from a rough-hewn receptacle for news of civilization and free-wheeling hard-drinking stopover for foreign sailors, into a secure link in the network of international shipping and tourism, a colonial-style refuge embellished with opulent hotel rooms and billiard saloons and offices with overhead fans and English oak desks, and a home-away-from-home for foreigners caught by circumstances in the cleft between East and West in the sunset years of the era of Emperor Meiji and QueenVictoria.
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7
Golden Years
BEFORETHEDAWN of air travel, Nagasaki’s position as Japan’s closest port to Shanghai made it the first point of contact for most of the steamships reaching this country via China, first landing place for passengers, and first receptacle for merchandise, knowledge and technology. Some of the ships sailing from Shanghai also carried renowned visitors whose stays in Nagasaki, however brief, gained a permanent place in the city history. In June IPOQ, the American naval sloop USS Richmond steamed into Nagasaki carrying former president and Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had departed on a trip around the world with his wife Julia two years earlier, and Nagasaki was his first port of call in Japan.Acting American Consul Edward Furber led the foreign community in receiving the party at the waterfront and laying out a lavish welcome unprecedented in the twenty- year history of the foreign settlement.I The former president also enjoyed a cordial welcome from the governor of Nagasaki and other prominent Japanese citizens, doing much, as he had in other parts of the world during the trip, to promote American interests and strengthen friendship with foreign countries. Before con- tinuing on to Tokyo, Grant planted trees in Nagasaki Park near
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Suwa Shinto Shrine and presented a message to Nagasaki authorities to commemorate the event.This message was later engraved in Grant’s handwriting on a stone monument in the park, and it remains legible today despite the passage of time and the stormy interval of war that marred relations between the two countries.The message reads as follows: Nagasaki Japan, June JJnd, IPOQ. At the request of Governor Utsumi Tadakatsu, Mrs. Grant and I each planted a tree in the Nagasaki Park. I hope that both trees may prosper, grow large, live long, and in their growth, prosperity and long life be emblematic of the future of Japan. Among the people who visited Nagasaki Park in subsequent years and read the inscription on the above monument was an entourage of American visitors including Secretary of War and future president William H.Taft, more than forty congressmen and senators, and a large number of civilians including Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. The Americans arrived in Nagasaki on I August IQHM in the middle of a three-month goodwill tour of Japan, the Philippines, and China and enjoyed a thunderous welcome from the citizens of Nagasaki, including an opulent garden party at Nagasaki Park.The editor of the English-language newspaper in publication at the time ended his report on the visit by surmising that,‘the result will be a closer intimacy between the two nations than Commodore Perry ever dreamt of’.J Another famous visitor who started a visit to Japan in Nagasaki was Nikolay Aleksandrovich, the future Nicholas II and last tsar of Russia. The flagship Pamiat Azova dropped anchor in Nagasaki Harbour on JO April IPQI, but, unlike Ulysses S. Grant, the young prince declined all invitations to official events and meetings from local government officials and instead spent the first seven of what was to be a nine-day visit on incognito excursions into the town, shopping for coral and tortoiseshell ware in Kago-machi, posing for photographs in a rickshaw, sitting in the shade of temples and sipping tea from Arita-ware cups. Nicholas had probably been mesmerized, like so many others of his generation, by Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème and wanted to trace the French author’s footsteps in the backstreets and old quarters of Nagasaki without supervision or interference. During the final two days, he suffered through the obligatory official visits, including a twenty-four
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course Japanese meal that included everything from wild duck soup to a crane fashioned from seaweed and a mysterious concoction called ‘essence of lemon blossom’.K Nicholas also seems to have been able to mingle intimately with a Japanese woman, although his consort was not a courtesan of the type portrayed by Pierre Loti but rather the beautiful Michinaga Ei, a fluent Russian speaker and the proprietor of the Vyesna (‘Spring’) Hotel in the Inasa Russian quarter. A wealthy merchant of arranged for a dinner party in honour of the tsarevitch and enlisted Michinaga to serve as companion and interpreter. Although the details of the evening are sketchy at best, it seems that Nicholas and his travelling companion, Prince George of Greece, stayed overnight in the house of the above-mentioned merchant. Says Nagasaki historian Koga Ju jiro about this nocturnal rendezvous: ‘There is much to be said about̄ Michinaga Ei in her early years. It was common knowledge at the time that she shared the Russian prince’s pillow and enjoyed his affection that night in Nagasaki.’L The Pamiat Azova steamed out of Nagasaki Harbour on M May IPQI, Nicholas’ happy memories of this port and his friendly feelings towards Japan to be ruined a few days later by an assassination attempt in Otsu near Kyoto. Another important visit to Nagasaki might have been forgotten if not for the recent discovery of related historical documents. On JL March IPQN, the Empress of Japan arrived in Nagasaki Harbour on its regular voyage from Hong Kong to Vancouver via Shanghai and the ports of Japan. Among the passengers was John Poyntz Spencer, a member of the House of Lords, who had embarked with his wife on a trip around the world after retiring from the position of First Lord of the Admiralty.M Impressed by Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War of IPQL–QM, Spencer had made arrangements through Ernest Satow, the British minister in Tokyo, to visit the Japanese naval installations at Sasebo and Kure. He left the CPR steamer in Nagasaki and boarded the HMS Porpoise for the short voyage to Sasebo, accompanied by none other than Thomas B. Glover. Later, while resting in the hot-spring resort of Miyanoshita, Lord Spencer wrote the following thank-you note to the Scotsman in Nagasaki: Miyanoshita, Pth April, IPQN Dear Mr Glover,A pouring day enables me to take up my pen for letter writing and my first must be to thank you for your note of
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KHth March. I am obliged to you for your amended notes of the dimensions of the Sasebo Dock. I saw another dock at Kure built in similar form, wider at the floor than our docks. It is very kind of you to give me the letter weight with the torpedo head. I shall value it very much as a recollection of Japan and especially of my short but interesting day with you on H.M.S. Porpoise. I wish we had had a longer talk. Lady Spencer is delighted with her ‘bangles’ which are also of much interest.We are delighted with Japan, our visit at Kyoto was most enjoyable and I went then to Kure and Itsukushima in H.M.S. Edgar. It was most interesting to see the energetic and intelligent development of the Japanese dock yards. Very wonderful that all the complicated and costly machinery enough to equip an Arsenal and Ship-building Yard should be set up and put together without a single European.We go to Nikko to-morrow and stay for a week, then toTokio where we are to have much entertainment. I am greatly flattered by the attentions and civility of the Japanese government. I saw for a few minutes Sir E. Satow on Sunday. He kindly ran down to see me.Thanking you and your daughter for all your attention to Lady Spencer and myself. Believe me, truly yours, Spencer.N Prior to the visit, Ernest Satow, the British Envoy Extra- ordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan at the time, wrote two letters to Thomas Glover asking for his cooperation in receiving Lord and Lady Spencer in Nagasaki. Evidence of Lord Spencer’s visit to Japan can be found in various sources such as Foreign Office records and newspapers, but the three recently discovered letters reveal Glover’s role in the visit for the first time and a shed a rare light on the Scotsman’s involvement. During the following months, the Japanese government concluded one contract after another with British shipyards for the construction of warships, and the navies of the two countries joined in a relationship of unprecedented cooperation.This suggests that, although ostensibly a pleasure trip, Lord Spencer’s visit to Japan in the spring of IPQN helped to promote military cooperation between Britain and Japan and later to bring the two countries together as co-signatories of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of IQHJ and sympathizers in the struggle against Russia that culminated in the Russo-Japanese War of IQHL–IQHM.O Another famous visitor to Nagasaki in the wake of the Sino- Japanese War was Sun Yat-Sen, the ‘Father of the Chinese Revolution’ who had made Japan a temporary base for political activities after being banned from Hong Kong for orchestrating
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an insurrection in southeast China.After a brief initial visit in November IPQO, the former physician called at Nagasaki several times and established a close relationship with Chinese residents and Japanese sympathizers like Suzuki Tengan, editor of the Nagasaki newspaper To#yo# Hinode Shimbun.The financial backing received from friends abroad helped to hasten the collapse of the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty in IQII and the appointment of Sun as first president of the new Chinese Republic. Sun’s association with Nagasaki blossomed in February IQIK when Chinese residents and Japanese supporters came out by the hundreds to welcome the renowned revolutionary, who was now serving as leader of the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), when he arrived in this port on his way toTokyo. On the return trip the following month, Sun again enjoyed the hospitality of his Nagasaki friends, posed for photographs in several locations including the former Chinese Quarter, and spoke to an audience at a reception in the Chinese Consulate at No. J O¯ ura, lauding overseas Chinese as the ‘mother of the revolution’ and calling on the participants to ‘strive for peace in East Asia and friendship between China and Japan’.P Nagasaki had lost ground to Yokohama and Kobe in commercial and political importance, but, as noted earlier, the port was catapulted into a new period of prosperity by Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War and acquirement of Taiwan, by the extension of Euro-American colonial tentacles to various parts of East Asia, by the use of the port as an anchorage for the Russian East Asian fleet, by the Spanish-American War in the Philippines, and by a commensurate and dramatic increase in the number of naval and commercial ships visiting this port. Most of the foreign ships calling here killed two birds with one stone by taking on coal, fresh water and other supplies while giving their passengers and crew an opportunity to enjoy the exotic Japanese port made famous by Pierre Loti and the writers that followed in his footsteps. Among the vessels paying regular visits here was the Empress of Japan, which had carried the Walker family to Canada in IPQJ and Lord Spencer to Nagasaki four years later, and its sister ships Empress of China and Empress of India plying the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Company’s Hong Kong –Vancouver line.The CPR had been incorporated to build a transcontinental railway and to harness the scattered settlements of the Dominion of Canada, but the company leaders had also envisioned a fleet of
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passenger vessels that would connectVancouver with Japan and China and in that way complete Britain’s ‘all red’ route to Australasia, the term ‘all red’ meaning ‘all British’ in reference to the practice at the time of printing world maps with areas of British influence coloured red. Combined, the transcontinental railway and CPR Pacific steamers realized the ancient dream of reaching East Asia by travelling west from Europe and assured the position of Nagasaki, Kobe and Yokohama as nodes in the commercial and cultural network of the British Empire. Some of the Britons who visited Nagasaki on the all-red route were so taken with the natural beauty of the port and the peaceful atmosphere of the city that they decided to stay.One was Eliza Goodall, the widow of a British East India Company chaplain who arrived in Nagasaki in IPOM and was soon assisting in the work of the Church Missionary Society here. Later, she taught Japanese pupils at the English Church Day School in Dejima and opened a language and dressmaking school for girls in her house at No. K Higashiyamate, one of the earliest insti- tutions of this type in Japan.A cousin of the renowned poet Alfred Tennyson, she died in March IPQK at the age of seventy- five and was buried under a gravestone inscribed in both English and Japanese at Sakamoto International Cemetery. Samuel and Kate Barff also made Nagasaki a permanent home. The couple had lived for many years in Hong Kong, where Samuel worked in government service, and raised a family of four children there.The sons seemed to have excelled at sports, as indicated by the fact that two of their names are evident on the list of Hong Kong players in the ‘Cricket Archive’.Q The exact circumstances of their encounter with Nagasaki are unknown, but it is likely that Samuel, who was already in a delicate state of health when he arrived here in June IPQL, took a liking to the gentle climate, peaceful atmosphere and beautiful scenery of Nagasaki and chose it as a place to retire. Samuel and Kate took up residence in a house surrounded by camphor trees at No. IMA Minamiyamate, with a panoramic view of Nagasaki Harbour that probably reminded them of the vistas they had enjoyed in Hong Kong. The shipping intelligence in the English-language newspapers indicates that their sons were frequent visitors from China. One of them, Lionel C. Barff, was a correspondent for The Illustrated London News whose sketches of Nagasaki during the Sino-Japanese War were carried in the newspaper. Samuel Barff
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died in his Minamiyamate house in August IPQO at the age of sixty-nine. Kate had barely recovered from this loss when she heard the news that Lionel had been killed in North China while reporting on the Boxer Rebellion. She showed no intention to leave Nagasaki, preferring to remain alone in her hillside refuge. But her erratic behaviour came into the spotlight in IQIJ when she caused a commotion over an unpaid debt, dragging the British consulate into a dispute and even involving the governor of neighbouring Saga Prefecture. In a letter to the British Embassy on the case, acting consul G.H. Phipps describes Kate Barff as a very well known character in this port. Her eccentricities are notorious and have increased with the passage of years, until it may be doubted whether she can now really be said to be responsible for her actions. She receives a small monthly allowance from her son, who is resident in Shanghai, and lives on that and such sums that she can ‘borrow’ from various local foreign residents.IH
According to Phipps, Kate stayed in the Kaihin-in Hotel in Karatsu, a seaside resort in Saga Prefecture, for a period of three months in the summer of IQIJ and ran up a bill of over JHH yen. When she attempted to leave Karatsu by train the innkeeper intercepted her at the railway station and demanded payment. She claimed later that she was assaulted and forced to leave her luggage in the railway station as ransom. She also insisted that she had been offered free accommodation at the hotel in exchange for promoting it as a resort for foreign travellers, although she was unable to provide any evidence of such an agreement. Phipps tried to get to the bottom of the matter by communicating with Fuwa Hikomaro, the governor of Saga Prefecture. In a subsequent report, the latter refuted the claim of violence and assured that the luggage would be returned immediately, but he warned that the innkeeper would take legal action if the bill remained unpaid.II The files in the British Consulate archive end there, indicating that the issue came to a peaceful conclusion, probably with the intervention of Kate’s son in Shanghai.The eccentric lady, who had spent most of her life in the distant outposts of the British Empire, lived quietly in Nagasaki until her death on M May IQJJ at the grand old age of eighty-seven. She lies with her husband today under a single gravestone at Sakamoto International Cemetery.IJ
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During the busy summer months at the end of the nineteenth century, the CPR steamers had to vie for choice harbour buoys with American frigates, Russian warships and a dense scattering of passenger steamships flying the flags of companies like P&O, Messageries Maritimes and the Imperial German Mail Line. Nagasaki’s unique manner of coaling – made necessary until the IQJHs by the lack of a wharf for ocean-going ships – was portrayed in innumerable photographs, picture postcards and travelogues.After a ship anchored in the harbour, coal barges came alongside and troops of labourers took positions on ladders and used small baskets to convey the black rock up to the bunkers. One visitor described the scene as follows: The coaling is done, not by men, but by women, with huge wilted limpet-hats made of palm leaves, and bright blue and white towels twisted round their hair, as clean as new pins when the lighter- sampans’ bring them to their work (about a hundred to each boat). Their labour is made lighter by filling the coal in straw baskets, not so large as their hats, which are not hoisted but passed into the bunkers.There seemed to be about four hundred of them, besides men, for they filled four lighters and made a clatter like a board- school doing a singing lesson, or a tree full of green parakeets in Australia.IK The increase in harbour traffic translated into a boost of activity for the little port at the western extremity of Japan. On any one day, several thousand people might disembark from ships and pour out into the city. Sailors disappeared into the bars and bowling allies in the back quarters of the foreign settlement or stole themselves into the brothels in Maruyama, Izumo and Inasa. Others streamed out of the settlement into the labyrinth of narrow streets in the Japanese town, eddying in the studio of pioneer photographer Ueno Hikoma and reaching out in adventurous trickles to Suwa Shinto Shrine, the Buddhist temples in Teramachi and the still pristine countryside in Urakami and Tomachi. In the shops in the Japanese town, where signs in English and Russian trumpeted a hearty welcome, visitors could choose from an array of fine arts and crafts like tortoiseshell ware, Nagasaki embroidery, cloisonné,Arita porcelain, Russian-made silver spoons, ukiyo-e prints and lacquerware. Silk kimono, pearl necklaces, souvenir photograph albums and picture postcards sold so quickly that the shop owners could barely keep their showcases decorated, and rickshaw drivers became so proficient
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at English and French that they were able to serve as guides for tourists. For European and American visitors, the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement provided a kind of safe-zone, a secure stepping-stone in the line of Western influence stretching around the globe. Once ashore, they could check into a hotel where the staff spoke fluent English, French and Russian, enjoy a drink among fellow Westerners at the Nagasaki Club just as they had at the Shanghai Club two days earlier, visit their consulate to pick up mail, buy a locally published English newspaper and read it over a cup of tea or glass of beer in a British-style tavern on the backstreets, or stop by a bowling alley or billiard parlour that emulated its prototype in Europe and America. Nagasaki had also gained fame as the starting point for the journey to Unzen, one of the most popular tourist destinations in East Asia, especially in summer when the cool mountain air provided a refuge from the steamy ports of China and French Indochina.Travellers hired rickshaws in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and departed for the port of Mogi on the other side of the Nagasaki Peninsula, a distance of about five kilometres, usually stopping for a rest at one of the tea-houses inTagami,then continuing down the winding road to Mogi where they checked into the Mogi Hotel, a hybrid Western-Japanese facility standing amid pine trees on the coast of Tachibana Bay.The following day, they caught a steamer to the port of Obama and visited one of the hotels waiting for them on the waterfront with hot-spring baths, English furniture, and dining rooms serving European cuisine made from local products. Then they hired ‘chair palanquins’ – veranda chairs tied to poles, hoisted onto the shoulders of runners and carried in the fashion of the palanquins of old – to convey them up the mountain path to Unzen where they stayed for weeks on end, all of this made possible by the high value of European currencies in Japan. George Mansbridge and his family were among the first Britons spending yearly summer vacations in Unzen. As mentioned earlier, Mansbridge had been among the team of foreign specialists employed by Mitsubishi Co. when it leased the Nagasaki Shipyard in IPPL.The same year, he married Georgina Mills, the adopted daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Mills, longtime British residents of Nagasaki and proprietors of a hotel on Oura Creek.The couple was blessed with six children over the
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following years, all born in Nagasaki. Rose Mansbridge, George and Georgina’s fourth daughter, remembers the joys of childhood excursions to Obama and Unzen in a memoir: Obama, on the whole, was a quiet resort – restful and peaceful even at the height of the summer season. There were no automobiles, buses or taxis, and, strange as it may seem, there were no rickshas rumbling through the street. Neither were there bicycles. Because of the absence of wheeled vehicles, we children were permitted to wander around the tiny village and spend our pocket money in the toy shops and variety stalls which were lined mostly along the waterfront … Late afternoon, we would invariably be found down on the pier awaiting the boat to arrive with her passengers, many from China and Vladivostok, and, frequently, acquaintances of previous years. That was always a pleasant surprise, especially if they happened to be children with whom we had become friends in the past. By the time all passengers disembarked and the sun was dipping behind the western hill, casting a magnificent golden radiance across Chijiwa Bay, we knew it was time to wend our way back to the hotels. After soaking ourselves in a tub of spa water, we were dressed in readiness for the dinner hour.When dinner was over and dusk settled over Obama, we did not wander far from the hotel.We were always within calling distance of our parents who whiled away the evening hours on the lower verandas in comfortable bamboo rocking chairs … In years gone by, when we took off for Unzen from Obama, Mother would hire a sedan-chair for herself, and sedans for the rest of us. Sedan chairs were fashioned out of bamboo, and they were neither heavy nor cumbersome.They were actually armchairs taken off the verandas, and by the simple means of attaching a bamboo pole to the arms of the chair, it became a sedan chair. It was hoisted on the shoulders of two men, one in front, the other in the rear. How vividly I can recall visions of Mother hoisted aloft and sitting regally under the shade of her parasol.We children would snicker and giggle seeing her perched on high … I knew Unzen when there was a sprinkling of houses and four or five hotels, scattered throughout the valley, to accommodate the foreign clientele.There was also ample space for youngsters and adults to enjoy lawn bowling, croquet and such past-times. I remember there was a playground where youngsters and teenagers played. Rounders, an old English game of tennis racquet and ball and somewhat resembling baseball, was particularly popular with the gang.Any number could play,as long as the split was even, and there usually were enough of us to keep the game going all forenoon until time for tiffin (which in the
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Orient was the equivalent of lunch and more than a snack!).After tiffin came an hour or so of quiet; our parents took their afternoon naps then, and we had to content ourselves with reading or playing quietly until the afternoon-tea hour rolled around, and then it was time for sandwiches, scones, cakes and pastries – delectable morsels.Tea was served at family tables on the verandas, and when it was over, we were excused.There was never a moment when we did not find something to do.The Russian children taught us to play their games and we, in turn, introduced them to ours.There were not many that they did not already know. In that high elevation and fanned by cool mountain breezes, we were able to play games which otherwise would have exhausted us. By the time the stars studded the night sky and glow-worms winked in the darkness, and crickets starting chirping, we knew it was nearing the time to say ‘good-night’ to our playmates and their parents and hike off to our rooms for a splash in the tub before tumbling into bed. Never took long to be in the land of nod and dreams.IL As Rose Mansbridge’s recollections indicate, the foreign residents of Nagasaki enjoyed the amenities of a typically Euro- American lifestyle, plus a cosmopolitan worldview, a spirit of peaceful cooperation with the neighbouring Japanese com- munity, and proximity to beautiful ocean vistas and cool mountain forests. English was the lingua franca, but other European languages had little trouble finding understanding ears. Mission schools staffed by European and American teachers welcomed students of all nationalities, and social institutions such as the Nagasaki Club, Masonic Lodge and Women’s Charity League were similarly international and undenominational. Virtually everything they needed was now easily available here. The J. Curnow & Co. store at the corner near Benten Bridge, operated by British merchant Albert Russell, offered a variety of foods to satisfy the yearnings of expatriates, everything from Nestlé’s condensed milk and Canadian Creamery Butter to Crosse & Blackwell canned meat, Horlick’s malted milk, Cadbury’s cocoa, and Huntley & Palmer Chocolate Olivers packed in the company’s elaborately illustrated tins. Only a few doors away,the store run by I. Buhonkoff provided goods to assuage the homesickness of Russian residents and visitors, including the Russian cigarettes mentioned in the store’s showy newspaper advertisements.Anyone foolish enough to think that a bicycle might be useful in the hillside city of Nagasaki could purchase one at Adolph Saphiere’s machine shop in O¯ ura. Mr Saphiere also
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kept a number of typewriters and Edison’s Gramophones on hand, although, according to the advertisement in the newspapers, the payment of an eye-popping seventy yen was necessary to procure the latter.American merchant Rodney H. Powers, who ran a well-established business at the corner of the Bund, kept a number of ranges and heaters that he advertised via illustrated newspaper notices. Sigmund Lessner, the wealthy Jewish merchant and auctioneer, owned a two-storey provisions store in Umegasaki where residents could find a wide array of fashionable imported clothing, hats and accessories. Mr Fleissig, who ran a hairdressing salon with his wife near the entrance to the BelleVue Hotel, knew all the hairstyles popular in Europe.A foreign visitor could spend weeks, months or even years here without ever having to experiment with Japanese food. Restaurants run by entrepreneurs of various nationalities served Western and Chinese cuisine prepared from familiar products of land and sea, and the settlement’s notorious taverns were stocked to the hilt with imported lagers, ales and stouts and an array of wines and hard liquor that could rival any bar in Glasgow or Sydney. Anyone who needed to repent for overindulgence in the restaurants and bars could visit one of the many religious institutions in Nagasaki. In IPQN, O¯ ura Catholic Church and its rosary of small country churches in Nagasaki Prefecture were staffed by twenty-six and nineteen French and Japanese priests, respectively, and the seminary next door to the main church was filled to capacity with theology students and aspiring novices. Mass was celebrated regularly,and the confessionals were manned day and night by compassionate priests who could communicate in the main European languages. The English Church in Higashiyamate and the chapels in the mission schools also provided a resort for tired souls.The Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen at No.JN O¯ ura, a facility closely affiliated with the Protestant missions, offered cheap food and board in addition to spiritual comforts. A lonely Russian sailor, however, might prefer to go to the Russian Orthodox Chapel established in the grounds of the Russian Consulate at No. M Minamiyamate. Of course, the old Buddhist Temples and Shinto Shrines scattered throughout Nagasaki also threw their doors open to anyone, of any nationality or religious bent, choosing to invoke the help of indigenous deities. The Chinese segment of the foreign community also established
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its religious hub of choice. The Chinese Consulate, responding to demands from the burgeoning Chinese community in IPQJ, acquired the empty lot at No. KJ O¯ ura for the construction of a Confucian shrine and school. Chinese residents were con- centrated in the Shinchi neighbourhood, but space was too limited there for a facility of the kind planned. Work began in January the following year and reached completion in September. The complex consisted of a large entrance building and main shrine standing across a large stone-paved courtyard, with covered galleries on both sides. A brick wall circumscribed it with a pair of roofed portals at the front, both of which are intact today. The Chinese community suffered a setback as a result of the Sino- Japanese War of IPQL–M, but the Confucian Shrine remained in operation, and the Shizhong School established in a building behind the main sanctuary in IQHM enjoyed official recognition from both the Japanese and Chinese governments.IM Still another religious institution in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement was the Beth Israel Synagogue, Japan’s first synagogue. Jewish people from various countries including Russia,Austria, Romania and Turkey began to arrive in Nagasaki in the IPNHs, most establishing hotels, bars and stores in the back streets of the settlement, their numbers increasing in proportion to Nagasaki’s prosperity as a trade port.IN In September IPQN, prominent entrepreneurs Haskel Goldenberg and Sigmund Lessner led the local community in establishing a synagogue at No. II Umegasaki, next door to the latter’s popular store.The single- storey brick building with Japanese-style ceramic roof tiles and distinctive pear-shaped window awnings bustled with residents and visitors during the busy years around the turn of the century. In IQHI, Lessner founded the Jewish Benevolent Society here to aid poor Jews in Nagasaki and abroad and presided over a branch of the Anglo-Jewish Association.IO Medical attention was also readily available in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.A person suffering from an illness or injury could call at the clinic of Dr Robert Bowie, the respected American physician trained in Germany, or one of the other Euro-American physicians and dentists living here or visiting on a regular basis. Mary Suganuma, an American practitioner of homeopathic medicine, also provided services to foreigners from the house in Ju#nin-machi that she shared with her Japanese husband Suganuma Motonosuke.William Evan’s ‘Medical Hall’
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carried prescription drugs and shelf upon shelf of other imported medicines, not to mention a fine inventory of household items like Cuticura soap, Joseph Gallott fountain pens, sunglasses, and the latest issue of Murray’s Handbook of the Japanese Empire. If surgery became imperative, the patient could visit the Japanese government hospital in Urakami, where a foreign physician and instructor was on duty and where the Japanese staff was better trained every year in Western surgical and anesthetic techniques. If the illness or injury proved fatal, the bereaved family could hire John Wilson to handle embalming, burial in the international cemetery,and the erection of a fine headstone with an inscription in the language of choice. For a small port town separated from the centres of Japanese political power, Nagasaki also had a remarkable number of consular representations and foreign banks. In IPQP, six countries maintained independent consulates here: Britain, the United States, France, Germany, China and Russia. Several other countries, such as Belgium, Denmark, Austro-Hungary, Italy, Spain,The Netherlands, Portugal and the Hawaiian Republic, made their diplomatic presence known through the agency of one of the established consulates or through a prominent foreign resident. Branch offices of the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank, Russo-Chinese Bank and Yokohama Specie Bank, as well as agencies of the Chartered Bank of India,Australia and China and the Comptoir d’Escompte, shared space with the consulates on the Nagasaki waterfront and offered all of the financial services available in the civilized world, adding to the air of Nagasaki as a cosmopolitan port city.The writer of a IQHI article entitled ‘Nagasaki Re-Visited’ commented as follows on the boom in Nagasaki business and the activity of the port and foreign settlement: It is distinctly a live place now, and has found how to take unto itself a new lease of life. Ground lots that a very few years ago could have been secured for little more than the registration at the Kencho are now worth thousands of yen.To quote an instance or two, a lot on the front worth J,HHH to K,HHH yen less than three years ago changed hands a year or more since at over MH,HHH yen; the lot on which Her Majesty’s Consulate stands was purchased IL years ago for J,LHH yen … whilst the value of the whole property today is probably not less than NH,HHH yen … All this development has come about with the truly immense increase in shipping during recent years.IP
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After its removal from Myo#gyo#ji Temple in the IPNHs, the Nagasaki British Consulate had been established in an imposing two-storey building at No. Q Higashiyamate, looking out over O¯ ura Creek and Nagasaki Harbour.This structure was sold to the Reformed Church in America in IPPN and the consulate moved to the Bund at No.N O¯ ura, where it continued to serve as not only the most important foreign representation in Nagasaki but also a de facto government office for the entire foreign settlement. The correspondence and official documents of the former Nagasaki British Consulate are preserved today at the National Archives, Kew, and provide a wealth of insights into the development and decline of this port as a venue for international exchange.IQ Alerted to Nagasaki’s newfound prosperity around the turn of the twentieth century, dozens of business and industrial concerns in Europe and North America sent letters to the British consul asking for his assistance in gaining access to burgeoning Japanese markets. These included Edward’s Brothers Builders of Steam Fishing Vessels, C. Remy and Company Starch and Flour Manufacturers, Antwerp, the New Schultze Gunpowder Company, London, and the Anglo-American Rope and Oakum Company, Liverpool. Another somewhat heartrending reminder of the rapid increase in international mobility at the time and Nagasaki’s role as a stepping-stone in East Asia is the many letters sent to the consulate by British citizens seeking lost relatives. For example, a Mrs Kennedy of Liverpool wrote to the British Consulate in IQHI pleading for information about her son Nicholas, who had suddenly stopped writing home: He has been sailing from the Pacific Coast in American ships. He was sent to Nagasaki, but expected discharge at his last writing on Aug. IQth. However we have not heard from him since that date, and our most sincere thanks will be tendered if you can send any news of him. He is JH years of age, about M ft P in, of fair complexion and clean shaven.Trusting that you might be able to relieve a mother’s anxiety, I am, Sir, respectively yours, M. Kennedy. The transportation and information boom at the turn of the century also resulted in the publication of an unprecedented number of foreign-language newspapers.After the demise of The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser in IPNI, a string of newspapers, weekly or biweekly and often short-lived, offered information to the foreign community of Nagasaki. These
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included The Nagasaki Times (IPNP), The Nagasaki Shipping List (IPNQ–IPOH), The Nagasaki Express (IPOH–IPOL), The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express (IPOL–IPQO), The Cosmopolitan Press (IPOP), The Kiusiu Times (IPOP), and The Nagasaki Shipping List (IPQM– IPQO). As mentioned earlier, the editor of the The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express was Arthur Norman, a longtime British resident and leading participant in social activities who used his columns to comment on controversial issues like the entry of Japanese police into premises in the foreign settlement. In the end, Norman was literally driven insane by the tribulations of newspaper publication at the far edge of the world. In June IPQO, the British consul declared him incapable of handling his own affairs and put his property up for sale by public auction the same month. The auction advertisement posted in Norman’s own newspaper was entitled ‘Estate of A. Norman, Esq., a lunatic’.JH In the wake of the demise of Norman’s newspaper, pioneer resident and fellow Briton Frederick Ringer purchased both The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express and The Nagasaki Shipping List and amalgamated them to form a daily called The Nagasaki Press. Like its predecessors, the newspaper provided local news, advertisements, editorials, and information on shipping and hotel guests, but it also benefitted from modern wire services that kept the foreign community better up to date on world news than ever before. The first issue, produced by British editor H.O. Palmer, was welcomed with great enthusiasm on N September IPQO.A series of British editors followed, taking up the task that had loosened Arthur Norman’s bolts in IPQO. Frederick Ringer’s company, Holme Ringer and Co., had flourished after helping to pick up the pieces of Glover & Co., opening branch offices in several locations in Japan, Korea and Russia and serving as local agent for dozens of foreign insurance and shipping companies. Among the steamship lines it represented in Nagasaki were the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., Occidental & Oriental Steamship Co. and To#yo# Kisen Kaisha, as well as the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. which advertised itself in local newspapers as ‘the fast route between China, Japan and Europe, via Canada and the U.S., calling at Victoria B.C., Yokohama, Kobe, Nagasaki, Shanghai and Hong Kong, saving three to seven days across the Pacific’. Holme Ringer & Co. served as sole Nagasaki agent for the Japan Brewery Company, which began selling its trademark ‘Kirin Beer’ throughout Japan
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in IPPP. Its other undertakings included a mechanized flour mill, petroleum storage facility, fishing and whaling enterprises, and a trade business that dealt in everything from machinery and shipbuilding materials to sheet glass, Oregon pine lumber, whiskey and ice. Holme Ringer & Co. also led the way in introducing the fruits of science and technology to the foreign settlement, and by extension to Japan, such as electrical power and telephone lines. By IPQO, the staff had increased to twenty- one Europeans and dozens of Japanese, the latter invariably working in traditional Japanese garb according to the wishes of their employer. By the time he took Nagasaki’s English-language newspapers under his arm in IPQO, the portly Frederick Ringer had all the aura of a Hong Kong taipan pulling the reins of an old-fashioned business empire from his perch on an Oriental hillside.JI Ringer lived with his wife Carolina (née Gower, an indirect descendant of Sir Erasmus Gower, commander of the IOQK British expedition to the Chinese Imperial court and later governor of Newfoundland) at No.J Minamiyamate, one of the best residential locations in the foreign settlement.The single-storey house commanded a panoramic view over Nagasaki Harbour and amalgamated British and Japanese building styles, with walls of Amakusa sandstone, high shuttered windows and doors, coal- burning fireplaces and a traditional Japanese roof with grey ceramic tiles and onigawara (‘devil tile’) end pieces to scare away fire and other unwelcome guests.The property was flanked to the north and south by the Glover family house at No. K Minamiyamate and the former house of William Alt at No. IL Minamiyamate, respectively, the spaces lush with lawns, Japanese- style gardens and flowering trees. Frederick and Carolina’s three children Fred, Lina and Sydney (born in IPPL, IPPN and IPQI) were sent to boarding school in England from an early age. Fred and Sydney would later return to Nagasaki to take over the reins of Holme Ringer & Co., while Lina would ignore her father’s protests and marry Wilmot H. Lewis, the dashing Welsh-born editor of The Nagasaki Press who later earned a knighthood for journalistic achievements but fulfilled his father-in-law’s prophesy by abandoning his wife and children. Nagasaki’s economic boom around the turn of the century and the sharp increase in foreign visitors and residents caused a building boom in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.At its peak,
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the commercial district in O¯ ura and the hillside residential neighbourhoods bristled with some PHH buildings designed in Nagasaki’s unique quasi-Western style.JJ Many of the old residential lots on the hillsides were subdivided to provide space for new houses and to answer the sudden demand for long-term accommodations, while the mission schools built new classrooms and dormitories to cope with the increase in enrolment, and stores, bars, printing shops and other facilities filled the spaces in the backstreets like dandelions sprouting after a life-renewing rain.The boom is further reflected by trade statistics: the total import trade in Nagasaki, which included items such as kerosene, flour, foodstuffs, cotton cloth, dyes and paints, locomotives, machinery and metals, shot from K.M million yen in IPQK to IQ million yen in IPQP.JK One of the most conspicuous results of the dramatic increase in visitors to Nagasaki at the end of the century was a boom in the hotel industry. During the short span of a few years, several hotels remarkable as much for optimism about the future of the port as for architectural grandeur appeared in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.The BelleVue Hotel, which British Consul J.C. Hall had described in IPPK as one of only two hotels in Nagasaki capable of accommodating respectable guests, was still receiving the lion’s share of visitors landing at the No. N customs jetty.In the interim, however, a number of new hotels of a similar class had opened their doors to guests.These included the Central Hotel (later renamed the Japan Hotel) at No. JM O¯ ura run by the Italian G. Samariva, who promised in his newspaper advertise- ments that the hotel boasted ‘fine dining and sitting rooms and billiard table’ as well as ‘large and airy bedrooms’ and ‘hot, cold, and shower baths’ but probably exaggerated when he added the claim:‘All Languages Spoken’.Another large establishment was the Cook’s Hotel at No. IL O¯ ura. In an English-language guidebook published around the turn of the century,the German owner, Leonard Winzen, vied with G. Samavira by calling his hotel the ‘oldest, best, largest, cheapest, and most comfortable establishment in Nagasaki’, and he assured readers that (despite its location on the infamous O¯ ura Creek) the hotel had ‘good accommodations for families’ and ‘private rooms for ladies and gentlemen’. The Cliff House Hotel at No. IH Minamiyamate was a project of Wilson and Charlotte Walker, whose residence stood next door
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at No. IJ Minamiyamate.Walker acquired the title deed in IPQN and ordered the construction of a large hotel, clearly assuming that Nagasaki would continue to prosper as an international port and that his family would be there to reap profits from the activity.The hotel opened in IPQO under the management of E.L. Conan, who until then had been running the Central Hotel. Charlotte Walker took the reins in IPQP.The hotel consisted of two two-storey buildings of wooden construction connected by a covered passage, one housing the hotel foyer, restaurant and billiard parlour, and the other rooms for guests.The buildings faced the harbour at the top of a high stone embankment and enjoyed a panoramic view of the Sagarimatsu waterfront, the blue water of the harbour, and the green peaks of hills on the opposite shore.A narrow flagstone path leading up from the waterfront separated the Cliff House Hotel from the older BelleVue Hotel to the east, but the two facilities were spared from competition by the unremitting flow of visitors to the port. In early IQHJ,Wilson and Charlotte’s eldest son Wilson Walker Jr. returned to Nagasaki from England, where he had been studying at the Carlisle Grammar School near Maryport, and took responsibility for the management of the hotel.A photograph taken in a Nagasaki studio at this time shows Wilson and Charlotte with their son and five daughters. The most imposing of all the new hostelries was the Nagasaki Hotel, a stately three-storey brick and stone building erected in IPQP on a prime stretch of waterfront property in the southern part of the foreign settlement, just a few steps from the landing jetty and Nagasaki Customs Branch Office.The architect was none other than Josiah Conder, the ‘father of Japanese architecture’ who had designed the Rokumeikan (Deer Cry Pavilion) in Tokyo and educated many of Japan’s pioneer architects since his engagement in IPOO as an instructor at the Imperial College of Engineering, including Tatsuno Kingo, the architect of Tokyo Station.JL The Nagasaki Hotel project was the brainchild of Frederick Ringer, who envisioned a world-class hotel that would signify Nagasaki’s status as an international port and rank shoulder to shoulder with the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, the Palace Hotel in Shanghai, and other luxurious hotels dotting the ‘all-red route’ in the Asia- Pacific region.While the building took shape in the early months of IPQP, Ringer and other investors established the Nagasaki
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Hotel Co. Ltd. and enlisted Richard Inman from Holme Ringer & Co. to serve as manager.When it opened in August IPQP, newspaper advertisements hailed it as the ‘finest hotel in the Far East’.Visitors arrived at the customs jetty at the mouth of O¯ ura Creek, where uniformed ‘boys’ were waiting to greet them, then walked along the Bund and entered the hotel through the front door, passing into a large foyer with the registration desk and office to the right and the dining room, bar and smoking lounge to the left. Everything from the exposed pillars and beams to the checkered tile floor, cast iron railings and ornamental doorways reflected the styles popular in Britain at the time. Wooden staircases carried visitors to the rooms above.The first-class suites were at the front, with French windows opening onto wooden balconies that provided a breathtaking close-up view of Nagasaki Harbour.All of the rooms were furnished with large brass beds and fine furniture imported from England, as well as the unprecedented amenity of private telephones.The hotel also boasted an independent electric plant and large-scale refrigerator, a kitchen supervised by a French chef, a tastefully appointed dining room with European furniture and expensive English tableware, and a richly stocked wine cellar.With rates starting from four yen per night, or the average cost of a month’s room and board in a Japanese inn, it was also the most expensive place to stay this side of Tokyo. Still, no one seeing the number of ships in Nagasaki Harbour or the activity in the streets of the city in IPQP would have doubted its future success. Another event that dominated newspaper headlines in IPQP was the launching of the N,HHH-tonne Hitachi-maru from the ways at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. Riding the wave of prosperity after Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War, Nippon Yu#sen Kaisha (NYK) ordered several new N,HHH-tonne steamships of the same class as the CPR Empress series, planning to install these on the ocean routes connecting Japan with Europe, North America and Australia. British shipyards would have been the recipients of all the orders if not for a government injunction calling for the construction of one of the ships in Japan. The Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard responded by adding a second dry dock to the facilities at Akunoura and Tategami, expanding its workforce, and making arrangements for the employment of respected British naval architect J.S. Clark and J.J. Shaw, engine draughtsman, to supervise the project. Formerly a manager of the shipyard at Barrow-in-
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Furness, Clark arrived in Nagasaki in the summer of IPQN and took up residence in Minamiyamate with his wife and three children. A process of trial-and-error continued over the following months, the building project hampered by the inexperience of the workforce and disagreements with the examiners sent by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping to assess the quality of the ship. In April IPQP, the epoch-making ship finally received a stamp of approval from the Lloyd’s representative G. Stunberry: Sir, – With reference to the steel steamer No. QQ now building by the Mitsubishi Company at Nagasaki, with a view to class IHH A-I, I have carefully examined the vessel fore and aft and, and I find the workmanship, including the riveting, satisfactory and equal in quality and efficiency to that in good shipbuilding establishments in the United Kingdom.JM The Mitsubishi elders probably jumped out of their chairs in delight, because this was precisely the assessment towards which the company – and indeed the entire nation – had been striving since the awakening of Japan from feudal slumber four decades earlier: namely, parity with Britain. When the Hitachi-maru reached completion in August, a group of government and industrial celebrities and representatives of the Japanese and foreign communities of Nagasaki were invited on board for a trial voyage. One of the guests was Ito# Hirobumi, the grandmaster of Japanese diplomacy, constitutional law and modernization who had recently ended a third term as prime minister. While the ship cut a curve around the East China Sea, lunch was served on the saloon deck and an orchestra entertained the guests with selections of Japanese and European music. Simmering under the smiles, however, was an ever-stronger determination among the Japanese to achieve technological independence and to lead the world in shipbuilding and other industries. J.S. Clark’s three-year contract was renewed twice as the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard ramped up its efforts to build world-class steamships, but he and his British colleagues were like teachers in a school from which students eventually and necessarily graduate. A high level of respect and gratitude nevertheless characterized the relationship. When John Hill, the foreman boilermaker working at the shipyard since IPPL, died in Nagasaki on IN March IQHH, Mitsubishi Co. presented his widow in Scotland with a tribute of IH,HHH yen, the equivalent of about a million dollars in today’s money.JN The aspiration among Japanese to achieve independence from
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foreign mentors also applied to the vaunted position of master mariner, which until now had been dominated by Britons and Americans. In an article related to the construction of the Awa- maru, the next grand project of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, the editor of The Nagasaki Press commented on the trend as follows: The Japanese large ocean-going steamers are at present commanded by foreign captains, while Japanese masters are in charge of small ocean-going steamers and coasting vessels. Japanese mariners have endeavoured for some time past to persuade the Nippon Yusen Kaisha to place Japanese masters in charge of some of the Company’s vessels on the European line, but have failed to succeed.When the Hitachi-maru was launched, application was made to place the vessel in charge of a Japanese master, but this was also refused. It is now reported that the Japanese mariners will adopt the same course of action in regard to the Awa-maru (N,IHH tonnes), now in the course of construction at the local Mitsu Bishi Dockyard.JO The Japanese mariners would have to wait until IQHN, when Murai Mamoru became the first Japanese captain to command a steamship on the European service,JP but by the turn of the century, just when Japan was abolishing the foreign settlements and reorganizing its relationships with Western powers, the age of foreign authority in matters of navigation and other areas of expertise was drawing rapidly to a close. While Nagasaki enjoyed its summer in the sun after the Sino- Japanese War, the Japanese government responded to the rush of activity on its western shores by extending the Kyushu Railway to Nagasaki, an engineering feat that involved the construction of several switchbacks and tunnels.The project reached completion in November IPQP with the opening of Nagasaki Railway Station.JQ The government also launched a harbour reclamation project of epochal dimensions that, when completed some twenty years later, would radically improve the efficiency of cargo handling by allowing large steamships to pull up to the Nagasaki waterfront and by bringing the railway tracks into close proximity to the harbour. One of the people to take advantage of the sharp upturn in the Nagasaki economy at the turn of the century was Robert N. Walker, who had returned to Japan with his children after the death of his wife Sato in Maryport in IPQL. Just as he had been
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lured to Japan in IPOL to work under his brother on the Mitsubishi steamship Ho#rai-maru, Robert was probably encouraged to come to Nagasaki by Wilson Walker, who had settled here with his family and was keenly aware of the potential for new endeavours. In early IPQP, Robert acquired the stevedore business and landing agency run by longtime Swedish resident Niels Lundberg, who in turn had purchased the business in IPQJ from Charles Sutton, a swashbuckling British entrepreneur with only one arm, the other having been cut off by an angry samurai on a Nagasaki backstreet in IPNL.KH Thus began ‘R.N.Walker & Co.,’ which was to prosper for four subsequent decades and to survive longer than any other foreign-run business when international conflict cast its dark shadow over Nagasaki on the eve of the Second WorldWar. Robert carved a niche in the centre of Nagasaki’s commercial activity, supplying food, coal and cargo to visiting ships, assisting in the unloading and forwarding of luggage, and arranging for services such as ship repairs, painting, and surveys to confirm the good condition of import cargo.The visit of a single foreign ship under his agency poured several hundred yen into the company coffers, a sum sufficient at the time to build a large house. He also acquired the perpetual leases to the lots held by Lundberg and purchased the buildings standing there, including the two-storey house at No. QB Minamiyamate, where he lived with his children during the first months in Nagasaki, and the adjacent lot at No. LLA Sagarimatsu where, four years later, he built a spacious brick warehouse for the storage of transit cargo. Both of the buildings remain in excellent condition to this day.The R.N.Walker & Co. office was located in the two-storey wooden building on the Sagarimatsu waterfront previously occupied by its predecessor. After settling into the social and business life of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, Robert and children moved to No. O Higashiyamate, a hillside lot with a fine Western-style bungalow and a spectacular view over the rooftops of the O¯ ura neighbourhood and Nagasaki Harbour stretching away to the East China Sea in the distance.The house was only a few steps away from the English Church and Kwassui Jogakko#, the Methodist mission school for women. Ironically,the peak of economic prosperity and cultural activity in Nagasaki coincided with the demise of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement as an official entity. Since the very day in IPMP when
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military, industrial and economic inferiority gave Japan little choice but to sign unequal treaties with foreign powers, the Japanese government had been striving to abolish the former treaties and to replace them with diplomatic agreements similar to those concluded among European nations. The foreign settlements had given Japan an immediate example for its emulation of Western-style industry,business and architecture and for its adoption of the artifacts of Western culture, everything from sewer pipes to armchairs, coffee cups and neckties. But by IPQP, when Robert N. Walker returned to Nagasaki and Frederick Ringer built his dream hotel on the waterfront, Japan was already amply capable of handling its own affairs on the world stage, and the extraterritorial rights enjoyed by foreigners and the enclaves of Euro-American culture they had fenced off for themselves on Japanese soil had become unpleasant reminders of an obsolete past to most Japanese. In July IPQL, the Japanese minister to Britain,Aoki Shu#zo#, won British agreement to revise the Anglo-Japanese treaty in force since IPMP. Signed in London on IN July IPQL and effective as of IO July IPQQ, the new ‘Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty’ called for the abolition of the foreign settlements as separate legal entities and the restoration of Japan’s autonomy in customs tariffs, immigration and other diplomatic affairs. The two countries agreed that the privilege of extraterritoriality would be rescinded but that, until they were given up voluntarily by their foreign holders, the perpetual leases currently in effect in the foreign settlements would be honoured by the Japanese government.This made the foreign renters de facto legal owners of their plots of land in the former foreign settlements. Japan also guaranteed the rights of British nationals to travel, live, and do business anywhere they wanted in Japan. Britain, on the other hand, agreed to recognize Japan as an equal sovereign state, to exchange ambassadors, and to instruct British residents and visitors to follow the rule of Japanese law. Another less explicit motive for Britain was apprehension about the Russian threat in East Asia and the need to maintain a relationship of cooperation with Japan in countering it.The United States, France and other countries soon emulated the treaty revision. Many foreign residents of the treaty ports in Japan were opposed to any change in the status quo because it threatened their long-standing financial and legal privileges and jeopardized
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their cherished sense of superiority, an illusion fostered by the colonial system in which foreigners kept the ‘natives’ and their supposedly primitive cultures at bay. Cries of apprehension began to echo in the streets of the foreign settlements of Japan soon after the announcement of treaty revisions and continued over the months leading up to the momentous change: That this uneasiness is not without reason may easily be understood by those who have had any experience of Japanese customs. It has been the fashion, and therefore a stupid conventionality, of late to extol the virtues of Japanese institutions and undoubtedly these are not without their points. But Japan as a nation is still too vexed and restricted in her progress by truly Oriental survivals to be given dominion over Europeans, their lives and properties. By this, it will, we are sure, be understood we do not intend any reproach to the Mikado’s Government, nor do we ignore the humanity of the motives by which the Japanese as a people are generally inspired. But we do hold, and insist, that until the laws and institutions of her land shall have more nearly approximated to our own, British subjects, and for that matter all Europeans, should be permitted to enjoy the boon of extraterritoriality.KI One of the most trenchant fears among the foreign community was that the abolition of extraterritoriality would remove the bridle of restraint from the shoulders of the Japanese police and allow them to enter homes at a whim and to intimidate and arrest foreigners without just cause. Although incarceration in a British or American consulate jail was bad enough, the prospect of being thrown into the dark unknown of a Japanese prison sent shivers down even the most experienced foreign spines.After all, rumours still circulated about the hideous punishments meted to suspected criminals in feudal days, and old timers told horror stories about the decapitated heads put out on display at the roadside in the pre-Meiji period. In June IPQQ, one month prior to the treaty revisions, the Japanese government issued a number of guidelines regarding the treatment of foreign prisoners, among them provisions for segregation from Japanese prisoners, for the placement of chairs in jail cells, and for ‘ethical lectures’ by Christian missionaries. In other aspects, however, the foreign prisoner was to be treated no differently from his or her Japanese companions. The editor of The Hiogo Evening News (Kobe) responded to this announcement with a strong tone of alarm and indignity:
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It is a matter for great regret that the authorities have not been convinced of the necessity of making greater changes in the matter of food and clothing.There may be some hardy foreigners able to thrive on boiled rice, barley, wheat and vegetables, but it is certain that the health of the average foreigner would suffer from such a diet.As clothing, foreign prisoners will be required to wear the same prison dress as the Japanese, with the exception that a smaller waist band than the obi will be allowed them. A kimino [sic] in the hot weather is an admirable garment, but the wearing of that garment in the cold weather would soon undermine the constitution of the foreigner as it does that of a number of Japanese. If the decisions of the Prison Bureau are such as the report in the papers represent, we repeat they are decisions to be regretted, for if the health of foreign prisoners is found to be seriously impaired thereby,it will inevitably excite reproaches such as we are convinced the Japanese authorities would wish to avoid.KJ The change in Japan’s relationship with the world and the status of foreigners living in this country arrived on IO July IPQQ in keeping with the new treaties, and most observers welcomed the change as a correction of previous imbalances and an opportunity for progress on both sides. The editor of The Nagasaki Press, for one, gushed as follows: To-day, the IOth of July, marks an epoch in the history of Japan, a country that has already surprised the Occident by its wonderful adaptation in so short a time to the modern civilization of the Western world.After years of patient toiling on the part of her able statesmen, Japan to-day enters upon an equal footing with all the Powers, and now holds the proud distinction of being the first Oriental nation to exercise jurisdiction over Occidentals.The old Treaties have ceased to exist, and there is reason to believe that under the new order of things foreigners resident in this country, and those who come after, will have little to fear from the change. In the same issue of the newspaper, the United States Minister Alfred E. Buck published a front-page notification calling on American residents of Japan to comply with all the new rules and regulations: In their relations with the people of this country [American citizens] should show at all times, by their demeanor and by their every act, such sentiments of regard with whom they will necessarily be associated and for all laws, regulations and customs, as will demonstrate that reciprocal friendship reasonably expected
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of them in response to the kind, considerate and just treatment enjoined on all Japanese subjects by His Imperial Majesty and by the high officials of the Government.The United States was the first of all the Powers to enter into ‘aTreaty of Peace,Amity and Commerce,’ with Japan. From that time the bonds of friendship uniting the two countries have become stronger with passing years, and it is the duty of all citizens of the United States in this country to see to it that nothing on their part is done to cause reflection upon the people of their nationality.
The authoritarian tone of this notification suggests ironically that the American minister expected his fellow citizens not to adhere to the new letter of the law. Sure enough, the first arrest and detention of a foreigner by Japanese police occurred on JI July – only four days after the inception of the new treaties – and the history-making person was an American sailor, seriously the worse for drink, who damaged a rickshaw, assaulted its driver when asked for compensation, and probably sobered up quickly when he heard the door slam shut on his Japanese jail cell. In February the following year, the reality of the loss of extraterritoriality came home in a similar manner to a sailor on the British gunboat HMS Pigmy who assaulted a rickshaw driver during an evening excursion ashore and found himself in one of the cells reserved for foreigners in the Nagasaki Prison.The British consul John B. Rentiers took the opportunity to visit the prison and to investigate the conditions awaiting foreign convicts there. In a long report to the embassy in Tokyo, he writes that the sailor, R.S. Harrison,‘was well and said that his treatment was not nearly so bad as he had expected’. Although the building had no heating,‘the prisoner is supplied with two or three hot water bottles, and I found two, which were hot, wrapped in a cloth on his table’. Rentiers describes the content of meals served to Harrison, which included a half a pound of bread a day, rice porridge in the morning (at first served with salt in the Japanese way but later changed to sugar because Harrison found the former unpalatable), and a dish of meat on Sundays,Tuesdays and Thursdays. He also mentions that ‘the prisoner is at present doing no work, but after the expiration of the M days allowed for appeal he will be set to work of some kind, probably,the superintendent said, to matchbox making’.The report is dated IN February IQHH, four days after the departure of the HMS Pigmy from Nagasaki without Harrison on board.KK
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Despite the grim forecasts of the diehards who interpreted the treaties as a humiliating compromise – and despite the unceasing delinquency of foreign sailors and their collisions with local police – the transition went so smoothly for foreign residents that one of them compared it to crossing the equator for the first time when ‘you expect something to happen, something that will mark the event, but nothing occurs’.About the only negative impact was the annoyance of having to apply for business licences at city hall, although this created an equally complex maze of red tape for the local bureaucracy with all the forms that had to be prepared and translated.KL The perpetual leases on residential and business properties were honoured by the Japanese government under the new system, the Japanese laws that foreigners were now obliged to observe were essentially the same as those in force hitherto, and no change was apparent in the attitude of the Japanese police towards foreigners. The lack of any special celebration of the event in Nagasaki or discussion of its significance in the local newspapers suggests that Japanese people also expected relationships with foreigners to remain essentially unchanged and business to go on as usual. More than anything else, the ports of Nagasaki, Kobe andYokohama continued to ride a wave of prosperity that was high enough to eclipse concerns about the future. Thus, although legally abolished, the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement persisted as an unofficial institution retaining its primarily foreign population, its unique social infrastructure and its quasi-Western architectural identity, and, for the foreigners who lived there, the neighbourhoods of Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate continued to provide a safe grey zone neither really in Japan nor out, a refuge from both the inscrutable world of Japanese culture and the pigeon holes of life back home. The new treaties carried enormous significance, however, for Japanese leaders watching global affairs from Tokyo.Two events immediately after the treaty revisions of July IPQQ, namely the promulgation of the yo#sai chitai ho# (Strategic Zone Law) and the establishment of the Nagasaki International Club, vividly reveal the change in political climate domestically and the disparity in diplomatic stance between the Japanese government and the municipal administration of Nagasaki. Promulgated in August IPQQ, the Strategic Zone Law designated Nagasaki as the centre of a high-security area because
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of its close proximity to the continent and called for the stationing of a battalion of the Sasebo Fortress Artillery Regiment in the Takenokubo neighbourhood of the city under the name Nagasaki yo#sai shireibu (Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters). One of the clauses in the law was a strict ban on the measurement and photo- graphing of the city,harbour and environs that jarred sharply with Nagasaki’s former liberality.The ban seems to have been enforced with special severity when it came to Russia, which was ascending the horizon as a nemesis of Japan. In May IQHI, for example, the captain and doctor on the Russian steamer Vladmir visiting Nagasaki were arrested for taking illegal photographs and handed six-month prison sentences by a local court.KM The ban also brought an abrupt end to the history of panoramic photography in Nagasaki, which dated back to the end of the Edo Period when photographers like Pierre Rossier, Felix Beato and Ueno Hikoma immortalized scenes of the port and city emerging from the mist of feudal isolation. After IPQQ, all photographs of Nagasaki and environs had to be altered so as to hide the line of mountains. Cutting a curious contrast with the wariness of the Japanese government was the establishment of the Nagasaki International Club, a British-style men’s club initiated for interaction between the Japanese and foreign communities almost simultaneously with the promulgation of the Strategic Zone Law.The purpose was ‘to promote a more genial and easy intercourse between Japanese and those of other nations’ now that the barriers of the foreign settlement had been removed.The first gathering was held at the Japanese restaurant Seiyo#tei in downtown Nagasaki on I August IPQQ – the same day as the promulgation of the above law – and was attended by IJM Japanese businessmen, politicians and physicians, as well as five Chinese and twenty Euro-American residents. Mayor Yokoyama Toraichiro#, who was unanimously elected to serve as chairman, later received a MHH-yen increase in his municipal expense account for social activities, clearly a sign that the city council wanted him to promote friendship and communication with foreign residents. In IQHK, Frederick Ringer provided the lot at No. O Dejima for the construction of a new club building. Part of the former Dejima Dutch Factory, this had been absorbed into the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement in IPNN and later acquired by Holme Ringer & Co. Dejima was certainly an appropriate location for the club,
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having served as Japan’s only open window to the Western world and the only meeting place for Japanese and Europeans for more than two centuries.The two-storey Western-style building, which still stands today, featured a billiard lounge, bar, dining room, and reading and smoking rooms furnished with fine European tables and chairs. At social events, members were expected to dress appropriately: either tuxedos or Japanese haori and hakama. The first monthly dinner at the new club building was held on the evening of IH November IQHK.The author of an article in The Nagasaki Press described the proceedings as follows: There were present no less than seventy-six members, and the evening passed off as gaily and happily as could be desired. Mayor Yokoyama – who is also Chairman of the Club – was in the chair and it would be difficult to find a more genial director of the evening. On his right was Governor Arakawa, and on his left Mr. C.B. Harris, U.S. Consul, while the remaining seventy-three included representative men of all races and callings.There was no stiffness, or undue formality, and an excellent meal progressed smoothly throughout. Applause signalled the uprising of the Chairman, who in a brief speech outlined the scheme of these monthly dinners, and the conviction of the promoters that they would contribute towards those objects for which the Club was founded. He was followed by Mr. C. B. Harris, who announced – to the general amusement – that he had been called on to interpret the Chairman’s speech. He passed from this to the more serious aspect of the moment, and enlarged on the benefits which, he felt certain, would accrue from a continuance of these dinners.’KN
Although Frederick Ringer had provided the property for the new building, the chief architect of the project was Kuraba Tomisaburo# (T.A. Glover), the British-Japanese son of Thomas Glover serving at the time as a Holme Ringer & Co. employee. After receiving his primary education at the Methodist mission school Chinzei Gakuin in Nagasaki, Kuraba had attended the elite Peer’s School in Tokyo and both Ohio Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. He returned to Nagasaki in IPQL and assumed a position in the firm run by his father’s former colleague. In the family register preserved at Nagasaki City Hall, his name appears as of I October IPQL in the register of a certain ‘Kuraba Rihei’ at No. KK Ebisu- machi, a Japanese neighbourhood of Nagasaki.The name ‘Kuraba’
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is a combination of two ideographs meaning ‘warehouse place’ and is feasible as a Japanese family name, but the phonetic resemblance to ‘Glover’ is too strong to think that it was anything but a fabrication. It is probable that Thomas Glover, perhaps with the help of certain well-placed friends, invented the name Kuraba and had a family register created in order to give Tomisaburo# a solid footing for his new life in Nagasaki. One of these backers may have been Iwasaki Hisaya, the son of IwasakiYataro# and third generation president of Mitsubishi Co. Iwasaki had also attended the University of Pennsylvania, and he accompanied Tomisaburo# back to Nagasaki in October IPQL.KO The young man became a leading participant in both communities: a Japanese national and registered Nagasaki resident named Kuraba Tomisaburo#, and an employee of the British firm Holme Ringer & Co. and active member of the foreign community going by the name T.A. Glover.KP In June IPQQ, Kuraba married Nakano Waka,the second daughter of British merchant andYokohama resident JamesWalter and a Japanese woman named Nakano Ei.KQ The couple was representative of a new generation of residents coming of age in the foreign settlement, people whose beloved ‘home’ was here, not in Britain or some other distant country. After the consul’s address, Kuraba spoke to the members of the Nagasaki International Club on behalf of the founding committee. The gathering that evening had deep personal significance for him because it promised the realization of his highest ideal: the union of the Japanese and British communities – the two elements of his own ancestry – in a bond of friendship and cooperation. Nagasaki indeed seemed to be embarking on a bright new era of international cooperation and goodwill, but the city’s peace and prosperity as an international port was about to be spoiled by a short, brutal war that would stun the world and redraw the map of East Asia. The war between Japan and Russia that erupted in IQHL was the culmination of a long history of confrontation and suspicion between the two countries. As early as the beginning of the nineteenth century, Russia had been trying to gain access to the islands stretching along the east coast of Manchuria, including Sakhalin, Kunashiri and even the Japanese island of Hokkaido, clashing sporadically with the Japanese fishermen who had settled in the area. Japan, meanwhile, was keenly aware of the failure of Asian countries to fend off Western territorial encroachment and
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had been striving to bolster its national defences, to gain its own foothold in Korea and China, and to foil all attempts by Russia to intrude on its field of interest. In IPQP, Russia wrestled permission from the Qing govern- ment to build the South China Railway through the Liaodong Peninsula, a wedge of Manchurian territory drooping like a stalactite into Bo Hai Bay and a strategic foothold in the marine approach to Beijing.To protect the railway, Russia gave itself permission to station troops along the length of the line.As a result, a steady stream of Russian soldiers and settlers arrived in Manchuria, and, by virtue of their presence, the towns along the way took on all the atmosphere of Russian possessions.This was a slap in the face for Japan, because the peninsula had been among the prizes it had won in the Sino-Japanese War but had been forced to give up because of Russian, German and French insistence that the peninsula remain neutral. The same year, when Germany used the murder of two priests as a pretext to acquire a slice of Chinese territory including Qingdao, Russia pressed China for a similar concession regarding the stronghold of Port Arthur (Lushun) at the tip of the peninsula. Riddled with corruption and tottering on legs already eaten away by foreign intervention, the Qing government acquiesced and signed a convention in March IPQP that gave Russia exclusive rights to Port Arthur – the same rights that only three years earlier had been taken from Japan. Britain and the United States, whose own economic interests in East Asia were threatened by these developments, sympathized with Japan, and the ministers of the two countries joined in its protests to China about the Russian presence in Manchuria.Then in IQHJ, Japan and Britain surprised the world by signing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the first international affiliation formed by both Japan and Great Britain and the first between an Asian and European power.The editor of The Nagasaki Press lauded the alliance, stating somewhat naively that ‘neither Great Britain nor Japan has any desire to encroach upon the territory of neighbouring states’ but going on to conclude that: It is hardly to be expected that the new treaty will be viewed with unmingled satisfaction by the Continental press, which prefers to see Britain alone in its ‘splendid isolation,’but the critics of Britain can hardly find any fault with the programme laid down, as it certainly does not contain any menace to the commercial
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aspirations of other powers … We view with great satisfaction the first foreign alliance made by new Japan and regard the treaty as the surest guarantee for the permanent settlement of the Chinese question and for the general welfare and prosperity of these parts.LH In fact the treaty only emboldened Japan in its confrontation with Russia.All chances for a peaceful solution to the deadlock evaporated in the darkness of Port Arthur on P February IQHL when Japan launched a surprise attack on the Russia fleet anchored there. News of the attack danced across the front pages of newspapers around the world, and France and Germany joined their ally Russia in condemning the attack as an act of treachery and violation of international law. On the same day as the outbreak of war, the Russian consul, P.A. Gagarine, paid a courtesy call on the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture to express regret over the deterioration in Russian- Japanese relations and to announce his departure. On IM February, he closed the Russian Consulate and Russian Hospital on the Minamiyamate hillside and, with more than ninety other Russian residents in tow, boarded boats at the O¯ ura waterfront and disappeared onto the French merchant steamer Yarra for the voyage to Shanghai. Governor Arakawa and Mayor Yokoyama, who had associated with the consul as fellow members of the Nagasaki International Club, came out to the waterfront to see the Russians off, perhaps feeling as they waved that they were bidding farewell not only to a section of the Nagasaki mosaic but also to a peaceful chapter in the city’s long history. Just as they feared, the economy of Nagasaki fell into a sharp slump as a result of the cessation of trade with Russia and the suspension of commercial shipping between Japan and the continent.The number of steamships arriving in the harbour dwindled day by day until JH February IQHL when the English- language newspapers – probably for the first time in their more than forty-year history – printed the word ‘NONE’ in the arrivals column of the shipping intelligence section. Companies run by Russians or involved in business with Russia, such as M. Ginsburg & Co., N. Mess & Co. and the Russo-Chinese Bank, closed their Nagasaki offices or transferred their agencies to British firms. Hotel rooms, restaurant tables and bar counters in the former foreign settlement lay vacant, and the flow of business in the Japanese town froze up under the constraints of martial law and
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the added burden of war taxes.The only consolation for Nagasaki was the city’s role as a point of departure for troops, horses and munitions headed to battle on the continent.A new iron-truss bridge erected at the northern end of the former foreign settlement in IQHL was named Suishi-bashi, or ‘Dispatch ofTroops Bridge’. One of the first Nagasaki enterprises to collapse during the opening months of the war was the most conspicuous of all: the Nagasaki Hotel, that grand monument to prosperity opened on the Nagasaki waterfront in a flurry of optimism only six years earlier. At an extraordinary meeting of company shareholders held at the hotel on IK April IQHL, a mournful Frederick Ringer asked the shareholders to vote for voluntary liquidation. This was accepted, and a public auction was slated for JM October to sell the hotel. The company advertised the auction in newspapers throughout East Asia and expected bidders from both Japan and abroad, but the fifty or sixty participants who appeared on the day of the auction were mostly foreign residents of Nagasaki, and no bids were made on behalf of any Japanese company.As it turned out, the hotel was purchased for IHN,HHH yen by none other than Frederick Ringer, who despite the gloom hanging over Nagasaki refused to abandon hope in his cherished hotel. The Nagasaki Hotel was closed for a month for refurbishments and reopened on I December IQHL as an arm of Holme Ringer & Co.LI Still another business that succumbed to the adverse economic situation was the ‘Medical Hall’ run by American entrepreneur William H. Evans. In one incarnation or another, the Medical Hall had served since the dawn of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement as a drug store, chemist and general store for the expatriate community. Evans had purchased the business in IPQM and improved and expanded its facilities during the boom years around the turn of the century. But the economic decline following the outbreak of war convinced him to put the business and all its assets and equipment up for auction. Evans later moved to Karatsu in Saga Prefecture to take up a position with the Mutabe Coal Company, a foreign-run enterprise that had remained relatively unaffected by the depression because of the huge demand for coal from the Japanese armed forces. At the auction held in Nagasaki on JO September IQHL, the store’s ‘aerated water plant’ was put up for sale as a separate entity.
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There is no record of the transaction, but the fact that Robert N. Walker opened the ‘Banzai Aerated Water Factory’ only two months later indicates that he was the buyer. In peacetime there had been a strong demand for soft drinks from the steamships visiting Nagasaki and from the hotels and bars in the foreign settlement.Walker may have surmised that although this demand had dropped off, he could tap into the market created by the burgeoning Japanese military presence in Nagasaki. If nothing else, the factory was a good way to utilize his fine brick and stone warehouse at No. LLA Sagarimatsu, built in IQHJ but standing idle on the Nagasaki waterfront as the Russo-Japanese War dragged on. The Banzai Aerated Water Factory began operation on I December IQHL, producing ginger ale and other carbonated soft drinks and delivering these to customers in globe-stopper bottles. Invented by Hiram Codd in IPOJ, the globe-stopper bottle had spread around the world as a convenient way to preserve carbonated drinks. The bottles and related equipment were probably imported to Japan soon thereafter, as indicated by the advertisement posted in the IP April IPOL issue of The Nagasaki Express by Briton William Jalland, an early proprietor of the Medical Hall, who informed readers that he was manufacturing aerated waters including ‘soda water, lemonade, tonic water, and ginger ale’. Japanese companies later made replicas of the Codd bottle, and these circulated throughout the country as ramune, a term apparently derived from the English ‘lemonade’. Walker did not come up with the name ‘Banzai’ at a whim.The word, roughly equivalent to the English ‘hooray’, had caught on as a catchword in the foreign-language press from the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War.The author of an article in Cherry Blossoms, a monthly magazine published by The Nagasaki Press, explains the phenomenon as follows: One of the greatest advantages derived by the world from great wars is the knowledge imparted of particular districts. It is fairly safe to assert that the Russo-Japanese War has taught more of the geography of the Far East to ‘the man in the street’ than ever he learned during his school days.Another of the freaks of war is the addition to the world’s vocabulary of certain words that come into general use; the South African War gave us ‘trek’ and ‘commandeer’ among others and before the termination of the conflict they were household words in Great Britain. It is not difficult to image
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people in the home-lands, in the near future, when describing some particular occasion for rejoicing, talking of the ‘Banzai’… After each of the great victories won by Japan during the war, the hills and vales of the country have resounded with Banzai! as the people have sought to acclaim their gallant soldiers and seamen. The word has attracted so much notice that the foreigner in Japan alludes briefly to each celebration as the Banzai, and the highest praise he can give anything is by using the word as an adjective, as to him it represents the superlative degree.LJ Walker indeed chose an excellent point in time to express respect for the Japanese military effort and to take advantage of the nuances attached to the word ‘banzai’. Little more than a month after the bottles started circulating in Nagasaki, Japan celebrated the greatest military victory to date and the cheer literally echoed down every hill and valley in the country. Neither Walker nor the rejoicing crowds noticed, however, that Nagasaki’s glory as a trade port was fading, or that the city’s role in domestic affairs was changing from commercial and cultural ‘window to the world’ to strategic gun port and shipbuilding centre as Japan stepped up its efforts to establish itself as the foremost imperial presence in East Asia. The Japanese third army under General Nogi Maresuke launched a general assault on the Russian stronghold of Port Arthur, adopting the conventional method of storming the enemy trenches and, as a result, sending wave after wave of infantrymen to crumple lifeless under a barrage of machine-gun fire, artillery blasts and landmine explosions. Since this tactic succeeded only in scattering the Port Arthur doorstep with Japanese dead, Nogi ordered his men to dig tunnels up to the Russian forts and to provide artillery support from the rear. But it still took four months of carnage and bloodshed to convince General Anatoly M. Stoessel, the commander of the Russian forces at Port Arthur, to surrender.The triumphant Japanese took over the fortress and town on I January IQHM, and Stoessel, his wife and a large number of other Russian officers and Port Arthur residents were sent to Nagasaki to await repatriation. The victory at Port Arthur elicited an eruption of euphoria in Japan. On M January IQHM, the citizens of Nagasaki came out by the thousands to the reclaimed land at Dejima to celebrate the success of the Japanese forces. Mayor Yokoyama Toraichiro# addressed the swelling, rejoicing crowd, extolling the achievements of his
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compatriots and leading a thunderous cry of banzai. This was followed by more speeches, the tossing of rice cakes and oranges into the crowd, and musical performances by teams of geisha. Saké dispensed free of charge disappeared into the crowd barrel after barrel, fuelling ever louder laughter and cries of joy. After the festivities at Dejima, Mayor Yokoyama and his colleagues retired to the Nagasaki International Club to join another IMH club members of various nationalities in raising a toast to the victorious army. General Stoessel and his party arrived in Nagasaki on IL January on the French steamer Australien. Stoessel asked for permission to stay on board, but this was refused because the steamer was scheduled to carry Russian prisoners-of-war to other parts of Japan. He and his wife were instead given lodgings at the home of Michinaga Ei, the beautiful Nagasaki geisha and entrepreneur who spoke Russian fluently and who had served as hostess and, if rumours were true, lover to the young Nicholas II during his stay in Nagasaki in IPQI. Governor Arakawa and MayorYokoyama followed General Nogi’s written request that Stoessel and the other former defenders of Port Arthur be received with ‘the honour due to a bushi (samurai warrior)’.LK The Russians were allowed to wander about the city at will, to visit the brothels that had been catering to the Russian East Asian Fleet only a few years earlier, and to enjoy entertainment and refreshments provided in the grounds of Goshinji, the Buddhist temple in the Inasa neighborhood where the Russian Naval Cemetery had been accepting the dead since IPMP. A British journalist expressed astonishment at the sight of supposed prisoners-of-war on the loose in Nagasaki: It was curious to watch the Russians enjoying the freedom of the enemy’s country, sightseeing in rickshaws and on foot, shopping, and looking at war-pictures in the windows.The natives treated them with uniform respect and good-nature, and the Russians were loud in their praises of the considerate treatment they had received from the Japanese.LL
For a few brief days, the Inasa neighborhood indeed regained some of the vitality and prosperity of its heyday as Nagasaki’s ‘RussianVillage’, and the Cliff House Hotel and other hotels in the foreign settlement enjoyed a burst of prosperity as hundreds of Russian officers and soldiers, crews from captured ships and civilian refugees from Port Arthur took up lodgings on their way
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through the port. Stoessel boarded the Australien on IO January and returned to Russia, eventually to face a court martial and imprisonment for his failure to defend Port Arthur. Next came the battle for the Manchurian capital of Mukden, the fiercest clash of the Russo-Japanese War and, at the time, the greatest expenditure of life ever seen in the history of human warfare.The Russians retreated from Mukden after a bloodbath that claimed the lives of about PQ,HHH Russian and OI,HHH Japanese soldiers.The Russian naval squadrons stationed at Port Arthur and Vladivostok, meanwhile, were making forays into the Japan Sea and engaging in sporadic sea battles with the Imperial Japanese Navy, resulting in the loss or seizure of warships and transport vessels on both sides. One of the doomed Japanese transports was the Hitachi-maru commanded by British captain Francis Cope (who survived). Launched from the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard in IPQP, the N,HHH-tonne pride of the Japanese shipbuilding industry was hit by shellfire from a Russian armoured cruiser and sank off the coast of Korea on IM June IQHL. Just as the sum of all the land battles in Manchuria and Korea did not add up to a decisive victory for Japan, the question of which country ruled the waters linking the shores of Japan, Korea, China and Russia remained unresolved. On IM October IQHL, under orders from Tsar Nicholas II, the entire Russian Baltic Fleet set sail from Europe on the long voyage toVladivostok via the Cape of Good Hope and Singapore, confident in its ability as one of the most powerful naval forces in the world to crush the Imperial Japanese Navy and to bring Japan to its knees. During the six-month voyage, however, the news from the Asian battlefields was anything but encouraging, and by the time Admiral Z.P.Rozhdestvensky and his armada reached the East China Sea in May IQHM, the balance of war was tilting deeply in Japan’s favour. Predicting correctly that Rozhdestvensky would take the direct route toVladivostok through Tsushima Strait,Admiral To#go# Heihachiro# and his fleet waited, poised for battle, on the coast of Korea near Pusan and pounced when the Russian ships emerged from a nocturnal mist on JO May. The subsequent two-day battle resulted in what observers called the most overwhelming conquest in the annals of naval history: no less than two-thirds of the Russian fleet was despatched to the bottom of Tsushima Strait, six warships were captured, and only three vessels managed
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to limp intoVladivostok Harbour. By sharp contrast, only three Japanese torpedo boats were sunk and all the other damages to Japanese warships were reparable.The toll in human losses also reflected the extent of the Japanese victory: L,PKH Russians were killed or drowned and about O,HHH captured, while only IIH and MQH Japanese sailors were killed and injured, respectively.LM The celebration of the Tsushima naval victory eclipsed any other witnessed in Japan before. The outcome of the battle seemed to assure that Japan had not only settled its score with Russia but also irrefutably demonstrated its status as a world power and dominant force in East Asia. In the delirium of jubilation, everyone assumed that unprecedented global honours and financial prizes would reward the hardships borne by the Japanese people to date. In Nagasaki the populace came out by the thousands on L June to participate in an evening lantern procession through the streets of the city. The Nagasaki Press described the event as follows: It is difficult to estimate the number of people who took part, opinions ranging from ten to fifty thousand being given.The procession took one hour and thirty-five minutes to pass a point on the Bund and it is probable that vast numbers joined and left it at various places en route.The procession was headed by a band, followed by a portion of the employees of the Mitsu Bishi Dockyard, staffs of the local courts, students of Normal, Commercial and Medical schools, residents of IHK machi [neighbourhoods], members of forty Unions, and another portion of the Mitsu Bishi Dockyard employees, in the order named.The route taken was along the Bund, Main Street and Megasaki, then through the city to Shindaiku-machi, and from thence to the assembly ground at Deshima.At one point the business portion of the foreign settlement was completely encircled by the processionists. All the houses in the city were decorated with lanterns and many of the foreign residents’ and business houses were illuminated in the same manner. Bonfires were kindled on the summit of Inasa-yama and the two Kazagashira hills and threw a red glare across the sky and harbour.Throughout the evening fireworks were let off in various parts of the city.Akunoura and Inasa were also lavishly decorated with lanterns; in fact it looked in places as though the people wished to festoon the hills with them. In the harbour the sampans and lighters were illuminated in a fashion never before attempted in Nagasaki.The shouts of banzai were given with much heartiness until about II:HH p.m., when the last of the procession reached Deshima and the vast concourse
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dispersed in an orderly manner that would have astonished residents of English cities. Sunday’s banzai was certainly the best held in Nagasaki during the war and is declared by old residents to excel any held hitherto.LN Four days later, the houses in the Japanese neighbourhoods and foreign settlement were still bedecked with lanterns and street workers were still sweeping up the shreds of firecrackers when Robert N.Walker’s second daughter Margaret marriedWilliam O. Watts, an American civil servant employed in the US Army Depot in Nagasaki. The ceremony was held in the English Church at No. II Higashiyamate, which had been decorated with flowers for the occasion and was filled to capacity with relatives and friends including the consuls of Britain and the United States. The Nagasaki Press, referring to the bride’s father as ‘one of the oldest and best-known foreign residents of Japan’, tells readers that Margaret looked beautiful in an embroidered dress and that she was accompanied by her younger sisters Kitty, Maude and Violet who served as bridesmaids and ‘formed a very pretty trio in white and blue dresses with white hats’.LO After the ceremony, the guests followed the bridal party to the Walker residence just a few steps away at No. O Higashiyamate and enjoyed a reception hosted by Margaret’s aunt Charlotte.The lawn was scrupulously mown and tended, the table cloths and lawn chairs were spotlessly white, and the veranda of the house was draped with the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes, inspiring American Consul Charles B. Harris, who proposed the first toast, to call the marriage ‘the latest Anglo-American Alliance’.Absent from the celebration and from the ‘alliance’ was Margaret’s Japanese mother Sato, who had died when the bride was only thirteen years old. Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, based on the novelette by John Luther Long and set on this same Higashi- yamate hillside, had sent tremors through the opera world the previous year. Arriving in the lap of European culture just when reports of Japanese victories and gallant actions on the battlefield were racing across the front pages of newspapers, the story – lifted to an emotional crescendo by Puccini’s beautiful arias – struck a chord in Western hearts with its portrayal of samurai integrity and fidelity. In its depiction of the tragic fate of the heroine, however, it only reinforced the image of East and West as incompatible and of the former as the underdog in any exchange between the two. This image was going to take on painful significance for the people of Japan during the ensuing months.
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The Russo-Japanese War ended soon after the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima.Anxious to bring the costly confrontation to an end, the Japanese government asked American President Theodore Roosevelt to mediate peace negotiations. Roosevelt accepted the invitation, andTsar Nicholas II, no longer able to justify such an unpopular war, agreed to send a delegation to meetings in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the meantime the fighting came mostly to a standstill, the only noteworthy event during the following weeks being the Japanese army’s virtually bloodless seizure of the island of Sakhalin off the east coast of Manchuria.This coup de grace, together with the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in July IQHM and Britain’s explicit recognition of Japanese supremacy in Korea, seemed to guarantee Japan’s upper hand in the peace negotiations. Just as the Japanese nation expected to gain wealth and honour from the stunning victories over the Russian forces, Komura Ju#taro# and the other members of the Japanese delegation to Portsmouth were probably confident about winning demands for a huge indemnity as well as Russian cession of territory, railways and mines, and recognition of Japan’s exclusive rights in Korea. But the negotiations, held in August IQHM, betrayed all these expectations.The leader of the Russian delegation Sergei Witte maneuvred skilfully, portraying the Japanese as ‘pagan’ aggressors who launched an unprovoked attack on the Christian legions of Russia. He condemned the demand for an indemnity as evidence of ulterior motives, and, well aware that Japan was at the end of its financial tether, insisted that Russia was prepared to continue the war. The terms reached by the two countries on JQ August IQHM added injury to insult. Financially exhausted and wary of the buildup of Russian forces in Manchuria, Japan had little choice but to acquiesce when Russia offered to cede the southern half of Sakhalin in exchange for a withdrawal of the demand for an indemnity.The agreement gave Japan a few other gains such as the lease on the Liaodong Peninsula formerly held by Russia and the southern section of the Manchurian Railway, and it called on Russia to remove all its troops from Manchuria and to recognize Japan’s exclusive sphere of interest in Korea. But all of this was a far cry from the fabulous prizes expected by the Japanese public. As soon as news of the peace agreement and its humiliating terms reached Japan, people marched out of their homes and out
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onto the streets to protest, sweating as much from shock and rage as from the lingering heat of summer. Nagasaki also saw a mass rally to denounce the terms of the Portsmouth agreement, but the event did not escalate into a riot as inTokyo, probably because of the influence of prominent citizens who insisted that an early peace would mean the resumption of trade in Nagasaki and relief from the economic burdens of the war. Foreign residents like the Walker brothers and Frederick Ringer whose future prospects depended heavily on a revival of Nagasaki’s former activity of course shared this sentiment. Soon the protests tapered off and the Japanese public seemed to focus on the positive side of the war, namely the territorial gains in Manchuria and Sakhalin and the clearing away of obstacles to the exploitation of commercial and political interests in Korea.The anniversaries of the military victories at Mukden (IH March) and Tsushima (JO May) were adopted as Army Day and Navy Day, respectively, and were religiously observed every year thereafter.The leaders of the Japanese armed forces, General Nogi Maresuke and Admiral To#go# Heihachiro#, meanwhile ascended to almost saintly status and enjoyed tremendous acclaim throughout Japan during the months following the Russo- Japanese War. One of the celebrations to honour the latter was a ‘Naval Fete’ convened at the Tokyo estate of IwasakiYanosuke, the now retired president of Mitsubishi Co., in early November IQHM.The event was attended by an incredible M,HHH guests including Admiral To#go# and his vice-admirals, hundreds of Japanese officers and sailors, Mitsubishi executives and representatives of other major industries, British friends of the Japanese Imperial Navy – conspicuous among them an aging Thomas Glover who stood directly behind Admiral To#go# in a commemorative photograph – and a contingent of British naval officers and sailors who joined their Japanese counterparts in an enthusiastic show of solidarity. Commented one journalist who witnessed the friendly banter between the two navies:‘Signs were not wanting that the saké- cup and the beer goblet had circulated very freely, but there was no case of unsightly excess; only an excess of good humour and jollity.’LP The convivial atmosphere was due largely to the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance that summer, a circumstance that Japanese politicians hailed as one of the most auspicious
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outcomes of the Russo-Japanese War.The renewed alliance was indeed significant for Japan because it pledged continued bonds of military cooperation between the two countries and galvanized its position of power in East Asia.The agreement forged at the time of renewal also gave Japan a go-ahead for intervention in the affairs of Korea, stating explicitly that ‘Japan possessing paramount political, military and economic interests in Korea, Great Britain recognizes the right of Japan to take such measures of guidance, control, and protection in Korea as she may deem proper and necessary to safeguard and advance those interests.’ Britain and Japan were still slapping each other on the back over the latter’s victory in the Russo-JapaneseWar when a China- based squadron of the Royal Navy called at Nagasaki in November IQHM to celebrate the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Comprised of five cruisers and six destroyers including Sir Gerald Noel’s flagship Diadem, the squadron had been lingering in Japanese ports for a month and enjoying lavish hospitality wherever it went. Nagasaki was the last port-of-call before the squadron’s return to China.The officers and crew received an enthusiastic welcome from the people of the city, who came out by the thousands to the waterfront and filled a reception ground established for the occasion near Nagasaki Railway Station. In his speech to the visitors and participants, Mayor Yokoyama Toraichiro# expressed joy at the opportunity to welcome the squadron to Nagasaki and commented as follows on the significance of the visit: Our two Island Empires, one the most powerful in the West and the other having just emerged victorious from a great conflict, are geographically widely separated from each other, but in heart and mind they are knit together as brothers.We feel that we owe a great deal to our Western brethren for the rapid development and improvement of our country.Moreover, the conclusion of the new treaty of alliance not only strengthens the intimate relations already existing between the two nations but ensures the peace of the Far East.LQ On the evening before departure, the bankers and merchants of Nagasaki hosted a party for Noel and the other officers at the Japanese inn Ko#yo#tei.The party began with still another round of congratulatory speeches on the renewal of the alliance and a musical presentation by teams of geisha using the Rising Sun and
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Union Jack to colourful effect. When the party broke up reluctantly near midnight, the revellers were given lighted ‘alliance lanterns’ to find their way over the dark Nagasaki flagstone paths to their rickshaws.MH The evening also saw one of most spectacular illuminations, both candlelit and electric, ever witnessed before in Nagasaki.The editor of The Nagasaki Press described it as follows: For three hours Nagasaki was a blaze of light. Every house had at least one lantern, the shops had larger displays; some of the machi [neighbourhoods] were festooned with lanterns and Creekside displayed its well-known sympathy for the British tar by a splendid exhibition surpassing anything that had been done there on previous occasions.The foreign residencies and business houses were also illuminated, Messrs. Holme Ringer & Co. being conspicuous with a large electric device showing the British and Japanese flags.The Mitsu Bishi Dockyard had an electric display, showing the flags crossed and the word ‘Welcome’. From the summit of Inasa a similar device was shown and the other hills were lighted up with bonfires and stings of lanterns.MI That same evening, the ever resourceful and energetic Charlotte Walker made arrangements for the entertainment of some KHH sailors, who came ashore in two groups in the afternoon and evening.The Public Hall in O¯ ura was hastily decorated with flags and ribbons and a buffet of tea, sandwiches and pastry prepared, and the guests joined the locals for a few hours of music, dancing and conversation. One of the musicians was Robert N. Walker’s third daughter Kitty, who had been studying the violin since childhood and continued her practice in Nagasaki under tutors at Kwassui Jogakko#.A blooming young woman of eighteen, she probably caught the eye of more than a few blue-jackets during the evening.The party ended with a chorus of God Save the King and Auld Lang Syne and finally with a rousing three cheers for the ‘ladies of Nagasaki’ by the sailors, whose unusually good behaviour may have been due as much to Charlotte’s authoritarian presence as to the absence of alcoholic refreshment.While all this was going on, the tavern proprietors in O¯ ura were standing idle at their bar counters, looking at the lanterns they had hung up along the side of O¯ ura Creek, thinking wistfully of busier days, and cursing the ‘ladies of Nagasaki’ for intercepting their customers.When the squadron steamed out of Nagasaki Harbour the following day, the waterfront was packed with Nagasaki school children waving the Union Jack, and the
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harbour itself was dotted with the boats of local officials and other citizens out in untold numbers to bid their friends farewell. Another concert, held at the Public Hall on N July IQHN and entitled ‘Musical Soirée’, featured local talent both Japanese and foreign and attracted the attention of the editor of The Nagasaki Press, who mentions in his report that Kitty Walker participated as violinist and chorus member and tells readers that:‘The chorus was composed of young Japanese ladies, the one exception being Miss K.Walker who rendered the solo parts very pleasingly.’MJ The editor seems to be saying that Kitty was the single foreigner in the chorus, but he was not quite correct in that depiction.The fact was that she was neither officially British, because Robert N. Walker had not registered the births of Kitty or her siblings, nor Japanese, because her mother Sato had relinquished Japanese citizenship by marrying a foreigner. Although it may be attributable simply to the former master mariner’s reluctance to acknowledge his children’s autonomy,Walker’s procrastination in clarifying their nationality is suggestive of the neither-here-nor- there culture of the foreign settlement and of the position of long-term residents, particularly those who had been born here, who felt little allegiance to any country. On II April IQHO, some two decades post facto, R.N.Walker finally took the time to register the births of Kitty, Maude andViolet at the Nagasaki British Consulate.MK His two eldest daughters, Annie and Margaret, were American citizens by virtue of marriage, his sons John and Wilson had registered at the British Consulate in order to travel abroad alone, and his youngest daughter Gladys, fourteen years old in IQHO, enjoyed a birthright to British citizenship because she was a native of Maryport. Now only Robert Walker Jr., Robert N.Walker’s second son and heir apparent to the Nagasaki firm of R.N.Walker & Co., remained in the limbo of no nationality or, better stated, the comfortable grey-zone of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Nagasaki’s yearning to forget the war and get back to business was answered rather unexpectedly by a sharp increase in Russian visitors, many of whom were apparently inspired by a new-found interest in the little country that subdued Mother Russia like David toppling Goliath. One Nagasaki newspaper reported that an average of KJP Russians passed though the Nagasaki Customs jetty every month between January and September IQHN.ML As a result, the number of Russians taking up residence in Nagasaki
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also increased dramatically from IJH at the end of IQHKMM to LMH in April IQHN.MN Among the Russian visitors to Nagasaki in IQHN were revolutionaries and refugees from theVladivostok mutiny of the previous autumn who chose this port, not as a tourist or business destination, but as a base to distribute populist propaganda and to stir up anti-tsarist feelings among their compatriots.The leader was a charismatic Russian physician, linguist and political activist named Nicolas Russel (original name Nicholai Sudzilovski) who, before arriving in Nagasaki in early IQHN, had practised medicine in various parts of Europe, worked as a government physician in Hawaii, established a successful coffee plantation, and even served as president of the first territorial legislature after the annexation of Hawaii by the United States in IPQP.MO Russel rented a house at No. IJ Minamiyamate and used it to provide quarters for his comrades.This was the same large lot in front of O¯ ura Catholic Church where Wilson and Charlotte Walker were living at the time. In April IQHN, the Russians gathered donations from sympathizers and launched a newspaper called Volya (‘Will’ or ‘Liberty’). Japan’s first Russian-language newspaper, this was printed by To#yu#sha, a Japanese printing shop at No. KK O¯ ura with experience in publishing Russian pamphlets and advertise- ments.MP The liberal atmosphere of Nagasaki, the frequency of visits by Russian ships, and the surge in the number of Russian visitors and residents in IQHN provided ideal conditions for the newspaper.The experiment, however, proved short-lived: Volya ceased publication in March IQHO and most of the members of the ‘Nagasaki commune’ returned to Russia. Russel moved to the Philippines shortly thereafter and practised medicine in remote parts of the islands.The Russian Society of Political Prisoners and Exiled Emigrants later awarded him a lifelong pension in recognition of his work as a first-generation revolutionary.The cosmopolitan physician and activist died in the arms of his Japanese wife in Tientsin, China in IQKH, aged seventy-nine. However, forgotten in both Russia and Japan, the little Russian newspaper he published in Nagasaki in IQHN contributed – like the pioneering revolutionary organization Nardovaya Volya (‘Will of the People’) from which it drew its name – to the Bolshevik Revolution that turned Russia upside-down a decade later. News of the death of Frederick Ringer sent a shockwave through the foreign community of Nagasaki at the end of IQHO.
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The sixty-nine-year-old pioneer of foreign business in Japan had returned to his native Norwich for a vacation earlier in the year but had succumbed to a heart attack on JQ November, leaving his family and dozens of British and Japanese employees to continue the activities of Holme Ringer & Co.The reins of the company would eventually fall to Ringer’s two sons, Fred and Sydney. One of the first decisions made by the firm after the death of Frederick Ringer was to jettison the Nagasaki Hotel, which since the Russo-Japanese War had been struggling to stay afloat amid the economic depression in Nagasaki.The timing of the decision suggests strongly that Ringer had taken an over-my-dead-body stance with regard to the closure of the hotel and that his employees had faithfully observed that injunction. During the early months of IQHP – exactly a decade after the excited preparations for the opening of the hotel – the directors, auditors and shareholders gathered on several occasions to lay out plans for liquidation and to discuss the sale of the building and the disposal of assets.The closure was announced officially on IP February and brought into effect when the last remaining guests checked out after that date.The liquidators disposed of the hotel furniture and the rich stock of wines and liquors relatively easily, but they scratched their heads over the expensive English tableware and cutlery because every last spoon, fork and plate was inscribed with the letters ‘NH’. Luckily, however, a buyer was found in the form of the Nara Hotel, which had opened the same year to accommodate the growing number of foreign visitors to the ancient capital.MQ The windows of the Nagasaki Hotel were shuttered and the doors locked, and the grand building on the Nagasaki waterfront went into hibernation. The demise of the Nagasaki Hotel was not an isolated event but rather a symptom of an overall decline in the fortunes of Nagasaki as an international port.A large number of other hotels and businesses were similarly forced to pull down their signs as a result of the depression in business activity following the Russo- Japanese War, and the diminishing importance of the foreign settlement caused an unprecedented exodus of European and American residents. It seemed almost as though the vacuum in the harbour were pulling people out of their houses on the Minamiyamate and Higashiyamate hillsides, down the familiar stone-paved paths to the waterfront and into the cabins of departing steamships. One of the foreigners participating in this
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emigration was Robert N. Walker. The author of an article entitled ‘The Decline of Nagasaki’ in the Japan Weekly Chronicle (Kobe) commented as follows on the trend: The next few weeks will witness the departure of no fewer than KM foreign residents of Nagasaki. Of these not more than eleven are going on furlough, so that none of the others are expected to return.Two of the best-known of those that are leaving for good are Mr. John J. Shaw and Mr. Clark, who have just severed their long connection with the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Yards. Considering the recent advances that have been made there under their supervision it is not easy to see how their services can be dispensed with; but this is probably one more indication of the movement in Japan towards doing without the assistance of foreign experts in modern industries … Mr. R.N.Walker, who has been for many years a prominent businessman of Nagasaki, is also moving with his family toVictoria, B.C.NH The author goes on to blame the exodus on the Nagasaki customs officials, who he says insist on opening and inspecting all the luggage of passengers in transit and thus discourage people from landing.This was not a new complaint. Foreigners had been groaning as early as the IPOHs about how the customs officials inspected and stamped every last article of luggage and cargo passing through the port. As a way to dissuade them from wielding the stamp, one person had even suggested importing ‘something a trifle more vicious, say a little alligator, a small tiger or a few young rattlesnakes’.NI But the reasons for Nagasaki’s troubles in IQHP, of course, ran much deeper than irritations at the waterfront. Nagasaki had been the closest Japanese port to China and the only place with foreign residents during the long period of national isolation (INLI–IPMQ), so when the national doors opened in IPMQ it naturally enjoyed special status as the first secure foothold for visitors arriving from abroad.Then the increased European military and colonial presence in East Asia and the sharp increase in international shipping and tourism around the turn of the century had brought a few golden years of prosperity to the city as a port-of-call and coaling station.The situation, however, had changed. The revision of Japan’s international treaties in IPQQ had allowed Moji, Shimonoseki, Karatsu, Hakata and other small domestic ports in western Japan to open their doors to international trade and thus to share in the wealth
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monopolized previously by Nagasaki. Another important advantage for Shimonoseki and Moji, which faced each other across the Kanmon Strait dividing the main islands of Honshu# and Kyushu, was their strategic position at the head of the railway connecting southwestern Japan with the urban centres of Osaka and Tokyo. Since IQHN, the customs returns at Moji, which until recently had been little more than a coal depot, had consistently outstripped those of Nagasaki.The Russo-Japanese War and the enforcement of martial law had given these cities an additional advantage by halting international trade in Nagasaki and delaying the Nagasaki harbour improvement project. Moreover, the import of steel for shipbuilding and railways, which had been one of the pillars of Nagasaki trade at the turn of the century, had declined because Japanese steel mills were answering a considerable portion of the demand and had little or no need to rely on the services of foreign importers, brokers or insurers.The Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard was Nagasaki’s one shining star, but, as the author of the above article mentions, it was replacing foreign experts like J.S. Clark with graduates from Japanese universities and depending less on the help of the foreign community.The fact that the tonnage of domestically built ships surpassed that of imported ships for the first time in IQHP tells everything about the mood of Japan and Nagasaki the year that Robert N.Walker decided to leave.NJ In October IQHP, a foreign resident of Nagasaki going by the name ‘Citizen’ submitted a long article entitled ‘Fair Nagasaki’ to the Yokohama newspaper The Japan Mail. Reprinted later in The Nagasaki Press, the article sprawls over five columns and teems with criticism.The author writes that,‘Nagasaki, like Naples, has for her environment the fairest and most entrancing natural scenery of any city in the world; and her population, well, it is, perhaps, less reprehensible than that of the Italian city in its attitude to the foreign visitor, though of its effect on his morals as a resident, one hesitates to say as much.’ He goes on to condemn the ‘wealthy firms’ of the port for their irreverence towards religious institutions and the poor example they set for the Japanese community, but he aims his last and best disparagement at the ‘soldiers and sailors from transports and ships of war that call at the port from week to week’: This foreign representation is that which the average Japanese citizen comes closest in contact; and what impression can he
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receive as he sees those rowdy specimens of Western civilization roistering along the streets to and from the places of ill-reputed pleasure? How does the behaviour on shore of the crews of foreign warships visiting Japanese waters compare morally and socially with that of the Japanese sailors calling at the ports of Europe and America? Witness the convivial recreations and ungallant antics of the British sailors fêted in Tokyo last year, in contrast with the dignified bearing and conduct of the Japanese crews when received in England. Moreover, the only street fights seen in Nagasaki are caused by those representing the flags of other nations.The only saloons in this city, and for that matter all Japan, and they of the lowest type, are owned, patronized and conducted by foreigners … In the case of the last escapade which it was my misfortune to witness, a sailor from a French warship, behaving abominably in a Japanese restaurant, was arrested by a Japanese policeman; and while conducting him to prison, the officer was set upon by more than MH of the prisoner’s comrades who freed the culprit my main force, and defied the police. Nothing could be done save to call out the whole police force or the militia, which the Japanese were too solicitous of international amity to do. May I again suggest that the Japanese have some show of reason for the utter contempt they entertain for the average foreigner, and that not without cause are the more thoughtful of the upper classes gravely doubtful whether Japan cannot herself produce in time something better than Christendom.NK
The article elicited a hostile response from the insulted readers of The Nagasaki Press who wrote letters-to-the-editor rejecting the comments of ‘Citizen’ as the same biased diatribe espoused by narrow-minded missionaries since the end of the Edo Period. However, although it probably had little to do with the perennially poor behaviour of foreign sailors in Nagasaki, the author was at least correct in his prediction that Japan would lose faith in the Western countries it had emulated to date and that it would require less and less assistance from foreigners in mapping out its own future. Robert N.Walker may have been cognizant of this change in the Japanese attitude long before he left Nagasaki for Canada. In July IQHN, he had filed notice with the Nagasaki Local Court, naming Robert Walker Jr. manager of R.N.Walker & Co., and in April the following year he had visited the British Consulate to officially register the births of his daughters.The now fifty-seven- year-old former master mariner had made his fortune during
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Nagasaki’s heyday over the past decade, but he sensed that the times were rapidly changing, that marriage opportunities for his daughters had become scarce in Nagasaki as the tide of business fortunes ebbed, and that Canada was a far more safe and secure place to settle. A photograph taken at the time shows the entire family, with the exception of the youngest son Wilson who was away at school in Switzerland, gathered on the lawn at the Higashiyamate house to bid farewell to Walker and his four youngest daughters, Kitty, Maude,Violet and Gladys. On JQ April IQHP the five boarded the German steamship Yorck amid a noisy, tear-stained send-off from virtually every remaining member of the Nagasaki foreign community.As the cries of farewell faded on the spring wind, the ship pulled away from its anchor buoy,turned widely in the harbour and then departed, taking Robert N.Walker and his daughters who were never to visit Japan again.
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ON NU SEPTEMBER MULQ, only days after the announcement of the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty, the British ambassador to Tokyo Sir Claude Macdonald sent a confidential circular to his consuls throughout Japan asking for lists of British subjects who could serve as interpreters in case of emergency.The timing and purport of this directive indicate that, however officially applauded, Japan’s stunning victory in the Russo-Japanese War had sent chills down the British spine and invoked visions of a collision between the two countries over conflicting interests in East Asia. Nagasaki British Consul, Harold G. Parlett, responded in January the following year with a list of only six people in the entire Nagasaki consular district – which included all of Nagasaki, Saga, Kumamoto and Kagoshima prefectures – thought to have a knowledge of Japanese sufficient to help lower the language barrier. Parlett provided this information in the form of a table with columns for age, occupation, state of health, and levels of written and spoken Japanese ability.The first four names are those of British missionaries serving their churches in the area. The remaining two potential interpreters were Wilson Walker Jr. and
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Robert Walker Jr., listed as a twenty-five year-old ‘hotelkeeper’ and twenty-three year-old ‘stevedore’ respectively. In sharp contrast to the missionaries, who earned mediocre marks in the two categories of language ability, the Walker cousins were gauged as ‘nil’ in written Japanese but ‘very fluent’ in spoken Japanese. Parlett inserted an asterisk in red ink beside Robert’s name and a footnote that reads as follows:‘The individual is a Eurasian and is apparently not registered as a British subject. Mr. T.A. Glover, son of Mr.T.B. Glover of Tokyo, is also of mixed parentage but I have not entered his name in this list, notwithstanding his linguistic qualifications, as his health is so poor that it is very doubtful if he would be of any use in the field. I am given to understand moreover that he is registered as a subject of Japan.’M This confidential document illustrates the fact that most of the foreign residents of Nagasaki, even the sons of Frederick Ringer and other British people who had been born and brought up here, had little competence in the language of their second homeland. Robert Walker Jr.’s mother was Japanese but she had died when he was only twelve years old, and he had attended school in Belfast.Wilson Walker Jr., the son of European parents, had also received his education in Britain. Clearly, unlike most of their peers, the two Walker cousins had ventured beyond the boundaries of the foreign settlement and associated directly with Japanese, although they had never had the chance or the desire to study the complicated written language. When he submitted his report, the consul probably assumed that both Wilson and Robert Walker were permanent residents of Nagasaki and would be available for future enlistment, but this was not to be the case for the former. On NP March MULS, a notice for the sale of the Cliff House Hotel suddenly appeared in The Nagasaki Press. Posted by Wilson Walker Sr., the sale notice disappeared just as suddenly a week later, only to reappear for a few days in April.Throughout this period the hotel advertisement remained in its usual spot on the back page of the newspaper, and the list of hotel guests was still a long and healthy one. For more than a year thereafter the advertisement stayed in place and Wilson Jr. continued to run the hotel, but on MT September MULT, the sale notice was posted again and ran for one week. It seemed like a repetition of the previous year’s commotion, but this time the advertisement vanished soon after the publication of the
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sale notice and the hotel closed without any notification or explanation. These newspaper snippets provide a glimpse into the breakdown of the relationship between Wilson Walker and his only son.The cause of the feud, only vague rumours of which have come down in the family, was apparently the insistence of the latter on marrying a Japanese woman who had been working in the entertainment district of Nagasaki.Wilson Sr. flew into a rage when his son first breached the subject in March MULS and threatened to ostracize him by selling the hotel, promptly posting a sale notice in the newspaper.The marriage was put on hold and the notice removed, but the following year, when Wilson Jr. announced his intention to elope, his father responded by cutting him off, closing the hotel and laying down a law that his son’s name was never to be mentioned again in the Walker house. Although perhaps not unusual among hardheaded British patriarchs of the time – and perhaps elicited as much by the woman’s occupation as by her nationality – this violent, implacable reaction from Wilson Walker is rather surprising in view of the master mariner’s long sojourn in Japan and the fact that many of his friends and particularly his brother Robert had married and lived happily with Japanese women. Wilson Jr. slipped out of Nagasaki with his fiancée before the end of MULT and sailed to China. He eventually found employment with the Chinese Maritime Customs in Antung, Manchuria, part of the territory ceded to Japan by Russia in MULQ. Hugging the bank of theYalu River separating Manchuria and Korea and lying in close proximity to theYellow Sea,Antung had gained importance in MULS with the extension of the Japanese controlled South Manchurian Railway to the port from Mukden. It had been designated a treaty port the same year and saw a sharp increase in population and business activity. Wilson’s fluent Japanese was undoubtedly one of the important reasons for his employment here, and he must have found a comfortable niche because he went on to make Antung his permanent home. In the wake of their son’s departure,Wilson and Charlotte Walker vacillated for several months about the fate of the Cliff House Hotel, finally deciding to refurbish and reopen it in March MUML.Wilson named himself manager, but it was Charlotte who took responsibility for all the duties related to the operation of the hotel.This was probably not much of a burden, though,
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because the rising cost of living in Japan and Nagasaki’s alienation from the principal lines of trade and travel continued to cause a decline in the number of visitors.The Walker family lifestyle was characterized now more by quiet retirement than active participation in the business of the port.They relaxed on the veranda of their house overlooking the harbour, watched their daughters finish their schooling and prepare for marriage, participated in various social activities in the settlement and paid frequent visits to Shanghai where their eldest daughter Jane, who had married in MULR, was living with her husband Albert Taylor and young children. Holme Ringer & Co. was still the largest commercial enterprise in Nagasaki and the keystone of the former foreign settlement, running several subsidiary businesses in addition to its original mission as agent for a long list of foreign shipping, insurance and banking companies. Smaller foreign-run companies like R.N.Walker & Co. and Kyushu Stevedorage Co., not to mention a retinue of Japanese enterprises with a hand in international business, relied on Holme Ringer & Co. like planets orbiting a star.Among its most notable undertakings during the first decade of the new century was the Nagasaki Steamship Fishery Company,established in October MULS as the first in Japan to use steam-powered trawlers.The benefits reaped by Japan in its victory over Russia in the war of MULP–MULQ included the right to extend its fishing grounds to the waters around the coast of Korea and the Russian coast of the Japan Sea, and Holme Ringer & Co. seized the opportunity to tap marine resources for both domestic consumption and export. Kuraba Tomisaburo# was appointed managing director of the new firm and began work out of the Holme Ringer & Co. head office at No. S O¯ ura.The company purchased steam-powered trawlers from England, and the first – a second-hand MSU-tonne steel ship called ‘Hene Castle’ and renamed Fukaye-maru – arrived in Nagasaki Harbour in May MULT.N The trawling method, unhindered by regulations or quotas at the time, proved so effective that it propelled Nagasaki Prefecture to the forefront of the fishing industry in Japan and stimulated not only the establishment of similar undertakings throughout the country but also efforts by local shipyards to import the necessary technology and produce steam trawlers locally. The same year that the first Holme Ringer & Co. trawler
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steamed into Nagasaki Harbour and revolutionized the local fishing industry, the new British Consulate buildings reached completion at No. R O¯ ura, next door to the company’s head office.The construction project, launched four years earlier, had been beset by delays resulting from disputes with the Japanese company contracted to do the work as well as the general drop in international activity after the Russo-Japanese War. Designed by a government architect named William Cowan, the new complex was comprised of a two-storey main building of brick and stone construction and a kitchen and employees quarters at the rear. Unlike the consulates of the past, there was no jail.Today, a century and many ups and downs later, the property remains in its entirety on the original site, designated by the national government of Japan as an Important Cultural Asset. Copies of Kuraba Tomisaburo#’s letters to his father Thomas Glover, who was living in Tokyo at the time, are preserved today in Nagasaki and provide valuable insights into the relationship between the two men during the latter’s sunset years.O A letter dated MO March MULP reveals that Kuraba had been keeping a detailed financial account of debits and credits with his father. It also suggests that he had reluctantly accepted responsibility for the upkeep of his father’s Nagasaki property, including the collection of rent from tenants living at Ipponmatsu, the family house on the Minamiyamate hillside: Enclosed please find statement of my account which I hope you will find in order. This shows an amount of ¥O,MPO.PQ at your debit and would be very pleased to receive a remittance to reduce the amount now standing at your debit. I am getting awfully hard up and I do not know what I shall have to do unless I receive some money from you. I am paying more than a hundred yen a month for this place in taxes, [illegible] and wages for the gardeners, including repairs for the houses. It is really a pretty hard task for one to look after and keep this place up under the present circumstances having no income from the property excepting what I pay you myself as my rent. I sincerely hope that you will see your way to do something for me in regard to this as well as making me a remittance which you have promised me that you would at the end of last year. Youknow what I get from the firm is not enough to pay my own expenses and up keeping Ipponmatsu property …
The now thirty-three year-old Tomisaburo# was obviously dissatisfied with his role as Glover’s unpaid hireling in Nagasaki.
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Between the lines of the letter there might also be some resentment over the fact that he lived constantly in the long shadow cast by his illustrious father. Kuraba’s tone shows a remarkable change, however, after the establishment and initial successes of the Nagasaki Steamship Fishery Company. In a letter dated P June MULT he tells his father jubilantly about the large catches being made by the Fukaye-maru and mentions names that suggest not only his father’s but also the Mitsubishi Company’s investment in the project: The steam trawler ‘Fukaye Maru’ is doing unexpectedly well. I did not expect her to pay her expenses during the summer season, but I see she will …You need not be afraid of our boat fishing too near the shore as our Captain has a strict instruction from me to that effect, moreover we find that there is no special need of it at all; there are plenty of other good grounds to work on. Kindly tell Baron [Iwasaki] Hisaya and Messrs. Koyata, Kondo and Suda that I think our future is assured … The commercial success of the company apparently resolved Kuraba’s financial problems. In a letter dated T September MULU he informs his father that he has decided to move into Ipponmatsu with Waka. Since the death of his uncle Alfred in MULP, Tomisaburo# had been renting the house to P.J. Buckland, an executive at Holme Ringer & Co.The content of the letter also suggests that Thomas Glover, who would pass away two years later in Tokyo, was thinking of returning to Nagasaki to live with his son and daughter-in-law and to spend his last days in his beloved house overlooking Nagasaki Harbour: My dear Father, I have to thank you for your two letters dated NLth ult. and Rth inst. On receipt of the former I have finally decided to move into ‘Ipponmatsu’ in compliance with your wish. I am now getting estimates to have the house painted outside and to have electric light put in. Painting I think will cost ¥NLL/NQL and electric light about the same.These two things are quite necessary and I trust you will want to have them done at once. Please choose wallpaper for your rooms, one will require ML rolls, English, TL ft. border and the other T rolls, English, RQ ft. border, and send them to me at your convenience.Waka and I will take the middle bedroom …
Kuraba Tomisaburo# and Waka were living alone in Ipponmatsu and the Nagasaki Steamship Fishery Company was still thriving
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in April MUMO when Frederick Ringer’s second son Sydney, who had returned to Nagasaki after graduating from St Paul’s College in London, married Aileen Moore, the niece of Holme Ringer & Co. executive P.J. Buckland.The British Consulate at No. R O¯ ura, the venue of the marriage ceremony, had never been ‘so prettily decorated as for this wedding; graceful bamboos, flowers, and cherry blossoms of the palest shade had been skilfully utilized and the result justified the long hours of loving labour expended’.P The marriage was solemnized at the English Church in Higashiyamate, the same church where the bridegroom’s parents had married exactly thirty years earlier.The congregation, which filled the church to capacity, included most of the foreign residents of Nagasaki and a large number of Japanese guests including the governor of Nagasaki Prefecture and mayor of Nagasaki City,accompanied by their wives, and the leaders of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and other local companies.The same year, Sydney’s older brother Fred married Buckland’s sister Alcidie at Christchurch in Wanstead, London, near the Buckland family home, and returned to Nagasaki to take up the position of junior partner in Holme Ringer & Co.At this juncture, Sydney and Aileen took up residence in the Ringer family house at No.N Minamiyamate, while Fred settled with his bride in the grand old house at No.MP Minamiyamate acquired by his father a decade earlier and still inhabited by his mother Carolina. The festivities surrounding the marriage of Sydney and Aileen Ringer masked the ongoing depletion of energy from the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and international colour from Nagasaki Harbour. In November the same year, a young British missionary namedVincent H. Gowen visited Nagasaki on his way to China and stayed briefly in the BelleVue Hotel at No. MM Minamiyamate, now under Japanese management. Gowen seems to have been captivated by the historic atmosphere of the town and the residue of the foreign settlement years, but he clearly felt no regrets about leaving the port behind: The Japanese are co-workers with Nature; they even persuade it to conform to their artistic canon. Unless the European living there is willing to make a similar surrender, he remains an exile. His poignant apartness we felt in Nagasaki, a brooding city half smothered by the clouds hanging low on its circle of hills. Here were remnants of old imperialisms, Dutch and Russian, bleached high and dry above the receding wave of Western conquest.At the
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English church the priest, for no reason that we could decipher, wept in mid-sermon. Into the hill-girt bay came to anchor a towering white liner, the Empress of Russia, promising home and swift escape from lands in which we would be forever strangers. Our hotel, its rose-garden still flowering forlornly in November, was a stopping-place where the lost souls of Joseph Conrad’s novels might have yawned and drunk stupidly to ease their homesickness. Everything about it was hushed, the slippered servants, the straggle of English weeklies, Tatler, Bystander, Sketch, Punch, heaped in an oppressive drawing-room, the dinner which we were to meet in many a bachelors’ mess, fried fish, cold meat, boiled potatoes, stewed fruit on custard, a meal cooked without zest and served without flavour.This dinner left nothing more but to go to bed, to sleep as we could in rooms ponderous with gigantic furniture, chairs, dressing-tables, chests-of-drawers, dragged half way round the world from London in the days whenVictoria was queen. Nagasaki that night was the world’s remotest corner, a stagnant backwater where nothing would ever again happen. It spoke only banishment, and made homesickness ache like a decaying tooth. Out of Nagasaki, however, we escaped.Aboard a smart Russian Volunteer Fleet ship, the Poltava, its hull throbbing as it picked up speed, its two buff funnels smoking dark clouds in its impetuous wake, carried its own assurance of the MUth century. In an elegant saloon an ikon, signalized by a votive lamp, hung between portraits of their Imperial Majesties, the Czar Nicholas II and his sad-faced Empress.Q When Gowen passed through Nagasaki, the foreign population had decreased significantly since its peak during the heady years at the turn of the century.The number of ships calling at the port had also dropped off, making it easy to assume that ‘nothing would ever again happen’ here.The other side of the harbour, however, was anything but quiet.The dry docks, building berths and factories at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard were buzzing with activity and breaking records with every new ship thrust into the harbour. Gantry cranes had been erected, the waters along the Akunoura outfitting quay deepened, Japan’s first power- generating turbine installed to serve as the shipyard’s central source of electricity, and factories established to produce everything from mattress rivets to polished woodwork. One of the most prominent and symbolic items among the state-of-the- art equipment acquired by the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard was
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a MQL-tonne electric hammerhead crane mounted on the dockside in MULU.The crane was constructed by the Appleby Crane and Transporter Company, Parkhead, Glasgow, dismantled and shipped in parts by ship, and re-assembled at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard.R It is still in operation a century later, the oldest of its kind in Japan and a monument to the history of British-Japanese cooperation in Nagasaki. The Mitsubishi conglomerate was expanding in concert with the success of its Nagasaki enterprise. In MTUO, IwasakiYanosuke had given the reins of the company to his nephew Iwasaki Hisaya. Eldest son ofYataro#, Hisaya was a graduate of the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, a fluent English speaker and an intellectual with all the business acumen of his father and uncle. As president he continued his predecessors’ practice of purchasing mines, improving industrial facilities, providing for the welfare of employees, and procuring land for further expansion. One of the more notable properties acquired by the company was the Marunouchi district of Tokyo where the First Mitsubishi Building was completed in MTUP and followed by a series of other imposing red-brick buildings that transformed the old wood-and-paper neighbourhood into a Western-style business district. Nicknamed Itcho Rondon (‘London Block’), this architectural phenomenon sparked a rush to build similar bank buildings, government offices and train stations in urban cores throughout Japan. The shipyard in Nagasaki had been the focus of special company efforts around the turn of the century. On MP September MULS, the grandest ocean liner ever built on the shores of the Pacific Ocean slid down the ways at Akunoura. Christened the Tenyo#-maru, the ship boasted a gross tonnage of MO,QLL tonnes, a thrust of MR,TQL horsepower generated by oil-burning Parson’s steam turbine engines, a double bottom and frame using twice as much steel as any ship built previously at the yard, three manganese bronze propellers, and richly decorated cabins and saloons. Except for the engines, all had been made at either the Nagasaki factories or one of the countless subsidiary workshops throughout the city. Indeed, by the time the Tenyo-maru left its concrete womb and began its career on the Oriental̄ Steamship Company’sYokohama - San Francisco line, Nagasaki was taking on all the characteristics of a kigyo# jo#kamachi (‘corporate castle town’), that is, a city that thrives around a single major industry
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just as certain towns in medieval Japan flourished under the shadow of the castle and feudal lord they served. Merchant steamships were not the only product of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard. In keeping with its longstanding policy of support for government military projects, the company had also begun the construction of naval vessels during the years leading up to the Russo-Japanese War. The first fruit of these efforts was a OTL-tonne torpedo boat called the Shiratsuyu launched into Nagasaki Harbour on MN February MULR with all its engines, guns and fittings in place.S The project was commissioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy and conducted under a strict veil of secrecy –arelatively easy task considering the location of the shipyard on the thinly populated and topographically rugged Inasa side of Nagasaki Harbour – but the launching ceremony was attended by the usual contingent of business people, local officials and foreign residents including the British and American consuls. Only five years later, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard responded to an order from the Imperial Japanese Navy for a vessel almost a hundred times greater in scale than the Shiratsuyu, a warship that would rank shoulder to shoulder with or even surpass its rivals produced in Britain and the United States.The NS,QLL-tonne Kirishima, the first Japanese battleship built at a civilian shipyard, was launched on M December MUMO and spent the following year anchored in Nagasaki Harbour for final fitting, like a showpiece set up proudly in a shop window. The last foreigner employed at the shipyard was George Mansbridge, who served the company as a diver, rigger and engineer until retiring in MUMN and purchasing a house in the Koyabira suburb of Nagasaki. He clearly intended to stay here for life. As his daughter Rose said in a MUTM letter to the manager of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard:‘I do not think the strongest crow-bar could have extricated him from his beloved city of Nagasaki’.T Another Briton determined to stay in Nagasaki was Wilson Walker, who had been involved with the Mitsubishi Co. from the time of its inception at the beginning of the Meiji Period.Walker observed the comings and goings of ships from his veranda in Minamiyamate and kept the Cliff House Hotel running despite the fading glory of the foreign settlement. He undoubtedly took an interest in the activities of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and noted the launching of the Kirishima, but he died in
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November the following year, too soon to watch the battleship leave its mother harbour. He was sixty-nine years old at the time of his death, forty-six of those years spent in Japan. Newspapers in Japan and China responded with an effusion of tributes to the former master mariner. The author of his obituary in The Nagasaki Press wrote a biographical sketch that ran the length of the newspaper for two columns, expressing lament over the loss of one of the oldest foreign residents of East Asia and mentioning that ‘during his long connection with the Mitsubishi Steamship Co. Captain Walker became intimately acquainted with many of the great Japanese of the Meiji Era and the leading foreign residents of the country’.The burial at Sakamoto International Cemetery was attended by a large number of friends and inundated with presents of flowers from the Mitsubishi Co., NYK, Kirin Brewery Company and numerous other organizations and individuals.U On the same page of the newspaper carrying Walker’s obituary was an article entitled ‘The Siege of Tsingtao’.When the First World War exploded in Europe during the summer, Britain had turned to Japan for assistance in neutralizing the German naval squadron atTsingtao (Qingdao), the port on the southern coast of Shantung Province leased to Germany by China in MTUS.After Japan’s declaration of war in August, Japanese naval forces blockaded Tsingtao Harbour and landed troops nearby, going on to subdue the German stronghold in November. While war raged in Europe, the ports in East Asia enjoyed a commercial windfall from the increased movement of naval vessels and merchant ships.This enabled the Nagasaki Hotel to reopen under Japanese management in January MUMT and brought a much-awaited surge of prosperity to the other hotels and businesses in the former foreign settlement, but it also abruptly ended the German presence in Nagasaki.The German Consulate at No. MM O¯ ura closed in the summer of MUMP, and the consul at the time, Juris G. Specks, left Nagasaki with his family and colleagues never to return. Other residents unfortunate enough to hold German or Austrian passports or to have connections with related businesses also suffered heartbreak and upheaval. In a confidential report dated ML March MUMR, Nagasaki Consul J.T Wawn responded as follows to a question from the British Ambassador in Tokyo about candidates for a ‘Black List’ of enemy nationals in Nagasaki:
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In my opinion, the names of C.E. Boeddinghaus and Scriba and Co. might, as a matter of precaution, be placed on the Black List, though the business done by them appears to be practically nil … The latter firm used to do a ships’ compradore business, which is suspended for the present, and may not be renewed later.The proprietors of both firms, who were Germans, are dead, and the businesses left to their widows, of Dutch and Japanese extraction respectively.The only other enemy firm in the district is that of S.D. Lessner, an Austrian Jew, who has resided long in Japan and does a good retail business as grocer and general store-keeper. It appears distinctly inadvisable to place it on the Black List, as all the goods sold by it must come from allied and neutral countries. There are no other firms in this district whom I, at present, have reason to regard as suspicious.ML Sigmund Lessner had been living in Nagasaki since the early MTTLs, when he arrived here with his parents and sister from Constantinople (Istanbul). His father was Austrian and his mother Russian.The family assumed Austrian citizenship and aligned themselves with the German Consulate in Nagasaki, going on to take a place among the prominent foreign families in the port. Lessner opened a general store in the Umegasaki neighbourhood, where he sold imported foodstuffs, clothing and accessories, and ran an auction business that handled transactions related to real estate and other property in the foreign settlement.As mentioned earlier, he was instrumental in the establishment of the Beth Israel Synagogue on the lane behind his store in MTUR and in the launching of various organizations to promote Jewish interests in East Asia. He was also an active participant in the social life of the foreign community and a generous contributor to causes above and beyond the barriers of nationality and religion. Despite the advice of the consul in Nagasaki, the British government included S.D. Lessner & Co. in a list of more than seventy Japan-based enemy companies with whom Britons were instructed not to interact.MM The only other ‘enemy’ in Nagasaki was Carl Boeddinghaus, a German resident of this port who, as the British consul noted in his report, had died in MUMP after a sojourn of more than fifty years in Japan.MN The Japanese government compiled a black list similar to the one issued by the British government, labelling all German,Austrian and Turkish residents as potential spies and casting suspicion on business activities considered perfectly normal prior to the outbreak of hostilities. In November MUMQ, the governor of Nagasaki
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Prefecture, acting under orders from the Home Ministry, issued an order for the deportation of two Nagasaki residents deemed guilty of ‘conduct detrimental to Japan’s interests’: a German employee of C.E. Boeddinghaus & Co. named M.H.W.Riege and a Dutch art dealer named J.M. Sanders. The two were summoned to the Umegasaki Police Station and ordered to leave Nagasaki within five days, even though no specific charges were laid against them.MO However confident in the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, British residents must have felt some anxiety watching the departure of their German and Austrian neighbours, the movements of Japanese troops and the construction of battleships right under their verandas. In the early months of the First World War, Charlotte Walker and other foreign women banded together to establish a Nagasaki branch of the ‘British Ladies Patriotic League’ and to launch a campaign to raise funds for the Allied war effort. While busily organizing benefit concerts, garden parties and bazaars on the Minamiyamate hillside, they may not have paid much attention to the newspaper reports about the list of demands submitted by Japan to China and the controversy that it provoked both in China and abroad.The content of these so- called ‘twenty-one demands’ included confirmation of Japan’s acquisition of the German lease in Shantung Province, per- petuation of Japanese dominance in South Manchuria, exclusion of other powers from further territorial concessions or leases and, even more ominously, agreement to Japanese participation in Chinese police administration. Japan later dropped or modified many of these demands in the face of international disfavour and boycotts on Japanese goods by the Chinese public, but it was too late to erase the impression that it was exploiting the turmoil in Europe as an opportunity to advance its own agenda. The Japanese government rescinded its wartime black list in June MUMU but promulgated the Enemy Property Act only days later. On O July, subjects of former enemy nations residing in Nagasaki, that is, six Germans, one Turk, and five Austrians including Lessner and his wife, were ordered to report to the prefecture office and to submit a list of possessions. Lessner was able to resume his previous business activities despite these setbacks, but in February the following year he died of a sudden heart attack after walking from his house in Minamiyamate and opening the door to his store in Umegasaki. He was sixty years
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old at the time.The author of his obituary in The Nagasaki Press called him ‘one of the oldest and most respected foreign residents of this city’ and pointed out that although ‘nominally an enemy subject during the war, he remained on terms of closest friendship with Allied residents and generously contributed to war charities’.MP Lessner’s funeral was conducted at the Beth Israel Synagogue and his remains interred at Sakamoto International Cemetery, where his grave still bears the stone bust that his wife and friends installed in his memory. Sophie Lessner put her belongings up for sale in December MUNP and left Nagasaki for Shanghai shortly thereafter.MQ The Beth Israel Synagogue permanently closed its doors the same year, and the property was sold for N,RLL yen by the Shanghai Zionist Association.MR On O January MUMU, during a trip to visit her daughter in Shanghai, Charlotte wrote a letter to Kuraba Tomisaburo# (T.A. Glover), enclosing a cheque for fire insurance premiums on her Nagasaki property. She also asked Kuraba for advice about selling both the family house and the former Cliff House Hotel, clearly revealing her intention to move permanently to Shanghai. In his reply, Kuraba mentions that several other choice properties in the foreign settlement had been sold recently to Japanese, and he promises to inform her if he hears of a potential buyer.MS In view of the timing of this exchange, Charlotte may still have been in Shanghai when the Belgian Legation in Tokyo announced on M February MUMU that she had been chosen along with several other women in Japan to receive the ‘Queen Elizabeth Medal’, a decoration created by King Albert of Belgium to express gratitude to ‘those who were foremost in aiding in relief work of the Belgians who suffered from the ravages of the Germans’ during the war. Charlotte was the only recipient in Nagasaki, and although the medal was supposedly bestowed without distinction of nationality or class, most of the other recipients in Japan were wives of imperial family members and political figureheads like O¯ kuma Shigenobu and Shibuzawa Eiichi. With this last jewel in her crown, Charlotte placed an advertisement on the front page of the Q June MUMU issue of The Nagasaki Press for the sale of both the Cliff House Hotel at No. ML Minamiyamate and the adjacent family residence at No. MN Minamiyamate.An article on the second page of the newspaper entitled ‘Sign of the Times: Is Nagasaki in a Decline?’ calls attention to the advertisement and describes the history of the
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hotel, its ideal location close to the waterfront, its spacious rooms and verandas, and other appointments such as English billiard tables. But the writer is obviously shaken by the news. His article reveals a sense of doom never expressed so poignantly before, even when the Nagasaki Hotel and other venerable establishments closed down or transferred from foreign to Japanese ownership. To the foreign residents still enjoying the old life of leisure and affluence on the Nagasaki hillsides, Charlotte’s decision to sell the hotel and to depart overseas spelled the end of an era: As a prospective commercial venture for those on the look out for a good investment, [the sale of the hotel] will create interest of perhaps another kind, but as a sign of the times to old foreign residents it makes a most unwelcome appearance, regrettable to many and even ominous to a few … Apart from the disheartening fact that circumstances are bringing about this regrettable change of ownership in a British owned and first class hotel in the district, it is to be feared that Mrs.Wilson Walker may ultimately retire from the social as well as the business life of Nagasaki, to take up residence in Shanghai or elsewhere, and thereby create a void in our small community unpleasant to contemplate. To the relief of the foreign community and chagrin of the Walker family,no suitable buyer appeared when the initial tenders were opened in July MUMU.While the sale offer remained on hold, Charlotte gave the reins of the hotel to a Japanese entrepreneur named Y.Inuzuka who reopened it in January MUNL only to close it down again a month later, presumably unable to lift it out of debt.At one point the Nagasaki city authorities expressed interest in establishing an elementary school on the site, but this proposal fizzled under a cry of protest from local residents.Two Japanese physicians finally purchased both the house and the hotel in MUNN and converted them into the ‘Tanaka and Amenomori Joint Hospital’.Amenomori had been in practice in the Shin-machi neighbourhood of Nagasaki for some time.Tanaka Masahiko, his younger brother and the director of the new hospital, had studied medicine in Europe for thirteen years before returning to Nagasaki in MUMU. He spoke German and English fluently and was married to a French woman, a curriculum vitae that apparently elicited a nod of approval from the worried foreigners living nearby. The year MUNL saw not only the departure of Charlotte Walker from Japan but also, by coincidence, the retirement of the last
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foreign captain in the employ of NYK, namely, Francis Cope, a Briton working for the company since MTUS and the decorated commander of a number of important ships including the Hitachi-maru (despatched to the ocean bottom during the Russo- Japanese War).MT In MUNL he returned to England to serve as superintendent of ships in NYK’s London office, relinquishing the rudder to his Japanese colleagues and ending, without much fanfare, a tradition that had continued unbroken since the early MTSLs when the Walker brothers and others accepted invitations from IwasakiYataro# to steer Japan’s first steamships. Charlotte’s only comment in her memoir about the departure from Nagasaki is that ‘Japan had become very expensive to live in and also rather quiet for my daughters.’MU However, it could only have been an emotional farewell. She was leaving behind the grave of her husband, the familiar faces of her many Nagasaki friends, and countless reminders of her forty-two-year sojourn in Japan – and she probably sensed that she would never see these verdant hillsides again. One of the faces that she saw disappear on the Nagasaki waterfront as the ship left the harbour was that of her nephew, Robert Walker Jr., the last member of the Walker clan still clinging to this country’s uncertain shores. As though taking a cue from its rival hotel across the flagstone path in Minamiyamate, the Belle Vue Hotel also shut down permanently in MUNL after a fifty-seven year career as a Nagasaki landmark. K. Nishizaki, the Japanese proprietor since MULR, sold most of the hotel furniture to hotels in Unzen, the mountain hot spring resort near Nagasaki that was still a popular refuge for well-heeled foreigners from Shanghai and Hong Kong.The hotel building and lot at No. MM Minamiyamate went to a Japanese business enterprise called Sawayama & Co., which promptly demolished the building and replaced it with a Western-style house for use as a Sawayama family residence. In January MUNM, a large group of Japanese residents of Nagasaki, including the prefecture governor, mayor of Nagasaki City, chairman of the local chamber of commerce and representatives of ‘every section of the Japanese official, professional, commercial and industrial communities of this port’ invited their counterparts in the Nagasaki foreign community to an evening of enter- tainment at the up-market Japanese restaurant Ko#yo#tei. The guests included the consuls of each country represented here and dozens of prominent foreign residents. In all about MLL people
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took seats at low round tables in the Nagasaki manner.The governor made the first address at the outset of the festivities, saying in English that,‘Nagasaki is, as you know,the oldest port in Japan for foreign trade and partly owes her present prosperity to the foreign peoples who are in amicable relations with us. I hope that the intimate relations hitherto existing between us will become closer and closer as time progresses.’Alexandr Maximov, the Russian consul and elder among his colleagues, responded with thanks and a comment about the world situation affecting Nagasaki:‘The year begins amid doubts and uncertainty.The future of the whole world is dark, clouds are heaped up on the horizon …We are in great want of better times, of a new year bringing really new welfare, new and firm assurances of prosperity and happiness, new forces and strong activities in the realm of peace and friendliness.’After this the participants enjoyed traditional Japanese cuisine and entertainment and completed the evening in a mood of fun and laughter.NL The foreigners who participated in this party were obviously touched by the show of goodwill because they organized a reciprocal event in the dining room of the Nagasaki Hotel only two weeks later.Tables were joined to allow six or seven people to sit together, each table being named after a flower that was placed as a centrepiece.An exchange of greetings similar to that of the Japanese party ensued, and afterwards the group moved en masse to the Nagasaki Club for cigars and liqueurs.The editor of The Nagasaki Press published details, commenting that ‘it was a very happy evening, especially as the language difficulty was not very pronounced, most of the guests speaking English’. He also mentions that most of the work in preparation for the event was done by American consul Raymond S. Curtice and Kuraba Tomisaburo# (T.A.Glover).NM While the fortunes of Nagasaki as an international trade port declined, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard remained the single bright light on the economic horizon. The shipyard was so inextricably involved in warship construction, however, that any ebb in the tide of militarization would spell hard times for both the shipyard and Nagasaki.The Tosa, lauded as one of the world’s most sophisticated battleships, was taking shape in Nagasaki in the summer of MUNM when American President Warren G. Harding asked Japan, Britain, France and Italy to send delegations to Washington to discuss military and territorial issues related to
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East Asia. One of the topics was the future of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, up for renewal that year but still an object of criticism because it seemed, particularly to the United States, exclusive and out of tune with the postwar changes in world politics. On MO December MUNM, the United States, Britain, France and Japan signed the ‘four-power treaty,’ agreeing to respect one another’s territorial possessions in the Asia-Pacific region and to terminate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance as of MS August MUNO. Five days after the signing of the new treaty, the Tosa was launched at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard.The participants included members of the imperial family, high-ranking government officials and the foreign consuls in Nagasaki. One unprecedented feature of the ceremony was the presence of two seaplanes, which flew from the Naval Aviation Corps in Sasebo and circled the harbour during the ceremony, ‘giving the inhabitants of the city by far the best aviation display ever seen at Nagasaki and creating considerable unrest among sea-birds’.NN The mood of the Japanese participants, however, was anything but jubilant because of the already widely recognized likelihood that the new battleship and several other vessels of the Imperial Japanese Navy would be earmarked for destruction by the terms of the ‘five-power treaty’. Sure enough, the treaty signed by Japan, France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States on R February MUNN tagged the Tosa and a number of other ships to be scrapped. The Washington Naval Treaty was welcomed by many Japanese as a relief from the burden of military expenditures and an opportunity to forge a new lifestyle characterized by increased popular involvement in politics, international cooperation, restriction of the military,greater equality for women, freedom of expression, individualism and other aspects of the interlude to which historians refer today as ‘Taisho# Democracy’. For Nagasaki, however, the terms hammered out in Washington had a devastating effect.The number of labourers employed in the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and affiliated factories, now an accurate index of the city’s economic well-being, plummeted from MT,LLT in MUNM to only S,SMR in MUNQ, throwing the city into an unprecedented depression.NO The shipyard received a further blow in September MUNO when a catastrophic earthquake struck Tokyo andYokohama, forcing NYK and Osaka Sho#sen Kaisha to cancel orders for the construction of new ocean liners. One of
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the UL,LLL victims of the Great Kanto# Earthquake was Robert N. Walker’s granddaughter Doris Babbitt, whose father Elwood Babbitt had taken up the position of commercial attaché to the American Consulate-General inYokohama only two days earlier. A glimmer of hope came when NYK announced plans to start a ‘rapid express service’ between Nagasaki and Shanghai, using two ultra-modern British-built steamers that would slash the usual day-and-a-half voyage to under twenty-six hours. Christened the Nagasaki-maru and Shanghai-maru, the two ships were built at William Denny and Brothers of Dumbarton on the River Clyde, the same shipyard that had produced the little steamer Filipino upon which Wilson Walker first saw Japan in MTRT.The launching ceremony was reported as follows in The Glasgow Herald: Messrs W.Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, launched on Tuesday the twin screw steamer Nagasaki Maru, which is the first of two they are building for NYK, Tokio, the mail service between Nagasaki and Shanghai.The vessel is OUQ feet long, QP feet breadth and ON feet in depth to awning deck and of QQL tonnes gross register. She will have accommodation for MQL first class and NLL third class passengers.The propelling machinery consists of Parsons M turbines designed to give a service speed of MT ⁄N knots.The naming ceremony was performed by Mrs Ohtani, wife of the London manager of the owner’s firm.NP The Nagasaki-maru reached Japan first and left on its maiden voyage to Shanghai in February MUNO.The Shanghai-maru followed a few weeks later and joined its sister ship on the semi-weekly service between the two ports.The inauguration of this service, which was extended to Kobe in May MUNP, accelerated the construction of dockside facilities on the reclaimed land at Dejima and the extension of the railway line to the waterfront. Still, it was hardly enough to recall Nagasaki’s former glories or to bolster its dwindling foreign population. In fact it exerted the opposite effect on the former foreign settlement because now the majority of visitors landed at Dejima, which was several hundred metres north of the old landing steps and customs jetties in O¯ ura. A Kobe journalist, who had accepted an NYK invitation to join the first voyage of the Nagasaki-maru from Kobe to Nagasaki and back in May MUNP, published a long article about his impressions of the ship and its southerly stopover. In the article he praises the honesty of Nagasaki shopkeepers, the beauty of the town’s famed
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tortoiseshell ware and the dexterity of labourers relaying coal from harbour barges to ships’ bunkers, but his only observation about the foreign settlement is:‘At a sailor’s bar-house, the old barkeeper and his foreign wife are taking in some cases of whisky. One hesitates to name their nationality, but they seem rather pathetic reminders of the time when Nagasaki was a busy port.’ The author, who spent only a few hours in Nagasaki, ends the article with the comment:‘And so back to busy Kobe, in strange contrast to the quietude of Nagasaki, and with many thanks to NYK for a pleasant trip which may be strongly recommended to all who with to get a little sea air and a change of scenery.’NQ While his neighbours and relatives in the former foreign settlement quit Japan like passengers fleeing a sinking ship, Robert Walker Jr. continued the stevedore and ship provision business of R.N.Walker & Co. and the production of carbonated drinks at the Banzai Aerated Water Factory. In previous years, the foreign and Japanese business communities had been able to keep a respectful distance, but now the decline in the foreign population and the rise of Japanese shipping companies made rapport between the two groups imperative. Robert’s excellent language ability, not to mention his genetic affiliation with both Britain and Japan, allowed him to do this more efficiently than most of his foreign predecessors.Another reason for his success was his commitment to Nagasaki. Despite the downturn in Nagasaki’s activity as an international port, he showed no inclination to live elsewhere.As a person of mixed parentage he was in a position similar to that of Kuraba Tomisaburo# (T.A. Glover), who was also bilingual and helped to bridge the gap between the Japanese and foreign communities of Nagasaki. But Robert Walker’s approach was different.While Kuraba was busy at the forefront of official international exchange,Walker preferred a low-key, spontaneous form of interaction. If asked about his ‘nationality’, Kuraba would have explained that he had been granted Japanese citizenship as a young man or might have insisted in a serious tone that he was actually both Japanese and British. But Robert Walker would have felt perfectly comfortable just to smile and say ‘none’. In January MUMQ, some seven years after his father and siblings’ departure from Nagasaki, Robert bought the bungalow at No. NTB Minamiyamate through the Jewish auctioneer Sigmund Lessner. One of the highest on the northern shoulder of the
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Minamiyamate hillside, the lot commanded a panoramic view of Nagasaki Harbour and the old city neighbourhoods stretching up the UrakamiValley.Although relatively small, the building had a protruding semi-circular veranda, bay windows and embellish- ments born from the amalgamation of Japanese and European architectural styles, and it sat in the midst of a spacious, carefully tended Japanese garden. Over the following years the bay windows watched the continuing departure of foreign residents of Nagasaki and perhaps clouded occasionally with Robert’s sighs as the once busy harbour and waterfront grew increasingly quiet. As business lagged, he abandoned one unprofitable holding after another.The first to go was the former family house at No. S Higashiyamate which had been vacant because of the lack of potential foreign renters. He sold this in MUMS to Kaisei Gakko#, a Catholic school for boys run by Marianist missionaries who used it as a residence for their French principal.The next piece of luggage to be dropped was the Banzai Aerated Water Factory, also deep in red ink due to the closure of hotels and the decrease in harbour traffic after the First World War. The factory advertisement in The Nagasaki Press disappeared on M October MUMU, indicating that it closed sometime around that date. Robert sold the building and its contents in MUNQ and relinquished the perpetual lease that had been in effect since the first days of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.NR In November MUNP, soon after the completion of Dejima Wharf and the installation of a regular NYK service between Nagasaki and Shanghai, Chinese statesman Sun Yat-Sen paid a final visit to Nagasaki, arriving here on the Shanghai-maru on NO November and spending a few hours with friends before proceeding to Kobe. In Kobe, he delivered a speech entitled ‘Greater Asia’ at the Hyo#go Prefecture Girls School, the audience swelling to such numbers that he had to give the same presentation twice.NS Sun, who would die of liver cancer in Beijing four months later, called on the people of China and Japan to join in ridding East Asia of the stubborn presence of imperial powers and to uphold the ‘rule of right’ based on ancient Oriental principles as opposed to the ‘rule of might’ used by the wealthy nations of the West to subjugate the people of Asia and other parts of the world. He concluded with a prophetic comment on the quandary Japan was about to face in international relations:
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We advocate the avenging of the wrong done to those in revolt against the civilization of the rule of Might, with the aim of seeking a civilization of peace and equality and the emancipation of all races. Japan to-day has become acquainted with the Western civilization of the rule of Might, but retains the characteristics of the Oriental civilization of the rule of Right. Now the question remains whether Japan will be the hawk of the Western civilization of the rule of Might, or the tower of strength of the Orient.This is the choice which lies before the people of Japan.NT
The same month that SunYat-Sen passed through this port, Mori Arayoshi closed the doors of the Nagasaki Hotel for the last time and sold off all the remaining furniture and equipment.The hotel had sputtered along after reopening under Japanese management in MUMT, growing more dog-eared and ghost- haunted with each passing year, but the loss of activity resulting from the completion of Dejima Wharf was the last straw. Oddly enough, the demise of this historic monument on the Nagasaki waterfront elicited little interest or regret in the newspapers, a fact that underlines just how low its profile had sunk.The building stood on the Sagarimatsu waterfront over the following months, like an empty book sleeve left on a dusty library shelf. For the majority of Japanese it was the relic of a chapter in local history with which they felt little affinity; for the foreigners remaining in the former foreign settlement it was a sad reminder of better days long past.The Nagasaki Prefecture government tried to have it converted into a dormitory for Japanese emigrants to South America, but this plan never came to fruition.A Japanese ice manufacturer later purchased the lot and summarily tore the building down.NU If the Nagasaki Hotel was the face of the foreign settlement, The Nagasaki Press – the last in a continuous series of English- language newspapers published here since MTRM – was its voice. When this fell silent in the summer of MUNT there were probably few ripples of surprise in Nagasaki because the number of subscribers had dropped to an unworkable level and the availability of other English-language newspapers had made it a quaint but unnecessary medium. For several years it had been published by a Japanese editor relying mostly on wire service and who obviously had trouble finding stories of local interest, as shown by the fact that, among thirty-two news items carried in the last issue on OM July MUNT, only two had anything to do with
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Nagasaki. One reported the trial run of a steamship launched recently at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard; the other conveyed the results of a high school baseball tournament. Just as the closing of the Nagasaki Hotel had gone virtually unnoticed, the demise of English-language journalism in Nagasaki was ignored by Japanese newspapers in the city, and the only salutary comment by the last editor in his own columns was a small notice reading, ‘We beg to announce to our subscribers and advertisers, as well as to the general public, that on and after M August MUNT, the publication of the “Nagasaki Press” will be suspended until further notice’. That same summer of MUNT, RobertWalker Jr. adopted Japanese citizenship and changed his legal name from Robert Walker to ‘Uoka Roba to’, the surname and given name reversed in the Japanesē fashion̄ and rendered in the katakana syllabary. Robert was by no means alone in his decision to naturalize. He followed in the footsteps of Kuraba Tomisaburo# and many other children of mixed marriages who chose Japan as their permanent home. However, while Kuraba had fashioned his Japanese surname from Chinese ideographs evoking the pronunciation of ‘Glover’ and others had assumed the surname of their Japanese parent,Walker stayed on the cultural fence by opting for the phonetic katakana script used to render foreign names and words. The use of katakana instead of ideographs in the official family register was, and remains, an extremely unusual case. Despite the change in legal status, Robert obviously continued to think of himself as a citizen, not of Japan, but of the foreign settlement. While Japan vacillated between ‘might’ and ‘right’ and the citizens of Nagasaki prayed for an economic revival, delegations from the United States, Britain, Japan and other countries met in London in January MUOL to discuss the ratification of the naval arms limitation treaty signed in Washington the previous decade. The Japanese representatives reiterated their dissatisfaction with the conditions of the previous treaty and requested a revision. This was rejected by the American and British delegations. Negotiations continued and produced a compromise, but this was condemned by the Japanese military as a humiliating capitulation. In November MUOL, Prime Minister Hamaguchi Osachi was shot by a right-wing extremist at Tokyo Railway Station and died from the effects of the wound the following year, and in May MUON a group of disgruntled naval officers and patriots attempted
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a military coup and attacked and killed Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi, who had called for limitations on military expansion and friendship with China. The Japanese Kwantung Army stationed in northern China meanwhile was evolving into a government of its own. Japanese forces dynamited the railway at Mukden on the night of MT September MUOM, retaliating, they claimed, for a bomb attack on the same railway by Chinese insurgents. Within weeks the Japanese forces had occupied several strategic centres in Manchuria, and the Japanese government in Tokyo had little choice but to acknowledge the action as a fait accompli.The rule of Zuang Xueliang, the warlord of Manchuria, collapsed in the wake of the Japanese onslaught, and China appealed to the League of Nations for help in halting Japanese aggression. In response, the League of Nations appointed an investigatory commission headed by the Earl of Lytton to look into the causes of the Manchurian Incident. In its report to the league in October MUON, the commission named Japan the aggressor and urged it to withdraw its troops. The Japanese government responded by pulling out of the League of Nations and turning its back on international opinion. The subsequent shift in political climate spelt the beginning of a new era of prosperity for the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard.The number of employees at the shipyard rebounded with the increase in both military activity associated with the Manchuria campaign and government policies aimed at improving the quality of merchant ships and bolstering the productivity of domestic shipyards. By MUOQ, not a single dock or berth was empty, the Mitsubishi shipyard, steel works, electric plants and arms factories were bustling with renewed activity, and the people of Nagasaki were revelling in relief and optimism over the change in their fortunes. In December MUOQ, British,American, and Japanese delegates met at London to discuss the terms of the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty, which was up once again for renewal.The Japanese representatives came to the conference keenly aware of the domestic backlash over the compromise reached by their predecessors in MUOL.They issued an unequivocal demand for complete parity among the three nations in all warship categories and, when this was rejected, angrily withdrew from the conference, repeating the scenario of MUON when Japan decided to
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pull out of the League of Nations over protests regarding its involvement in Manchuria. Now Japan was free of obstacles to military and territorial expansion. The Euro-American population of Nagasaki was now very small, comprised of missionaries, consular employees, employees of the Great Northern Telegraph Co., merchants and a few naturalized citizens like Robert Walker Jr. and Kuraba Tomisaburo#.The owners of Tanaka and Amenomori Hospital (the former Wilson Walker residence and Cliff House Hotel at No. MN and ML Minamiyamate) continued to provide rooms to foreign visitors seeking long-term lodgings, but the demand for this kind of accommodation had also declined sharply. One of the last foreigners to stay here was a Polish priest known as Maksymilian Kolbe who came to Nagasaki in MUOL and set up a printing press in the former hotel to begin publication of a periodical called Seibo-no-Kishi (Knights of the Holy Mother). In MUOR, he and his fellow priests moved their headquarters to a Nagasaki suburb where they established a school. Kolbe returned to Poland the same year and became director of Poland’s chief Catholic publishing complex. In MUOU he was arrested by the German Gestapo for criticizing Nazism, temporarily released, and then arrested again on charges of aiding the Polish underground. He was imprisoned atWarsaw and then taken to Auschwitz, where he volunteered to take the place of a condemned inmate who had a wife and children.Thrown into a starvation cell, he was finally executed by lethal injection in August MUPM.OL In a long report to his superiors in Tokyo dated MQ September MUOR, Nagasaki British Consul Henry H. Thomas filed a complaint about the unfriendly attitude of government officials in Fukuoka, now the major urban centre in Kyushu, and added that this was in ‘marked contrast to the Prefectural and Municipal authorities in Nagasaki, of the Customs authorities in both Nagasaki and Moji, and of the Shimonoseki Municipality, which I have found to be entirely friendly and even cordial’. After describing the failure of all his attempts to arrange meetings with government authorities and to acquire information about public works and commercial enterprises, he concludes: ‘I do not necessarily grumble at the withholding of the information. It is just possible that the Municipality may be genuinely under the impression that they have a good and sufficient reason for withholding it. What is, however, so undesirable is the very
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marked lack of even the scantiest consideration and courtesy towards the British Consulate’.OM On U January MUOS, Sydney Ringer’s second sonVanya married Prunella Frank, a native of NorthYorkshire whomVanya had met and courted during summer holidays in England. Consecrated at the British consulate, the marriage was celebrated by a large number of Japanese and foreign friends, employees of Holme Ringer & Co. and representatives of local government and industry at a party at the house ofVanya’s uncle Fred at No. MP Minamiyamate.ON The couple posed for photographs in front of a Christmas tree left decorated for the occasion and inspected wedding gifts crowding a long table.These photographs reveal the joyful atmosphere of the occasion, but the smiling participants undoubtedly sensed that they were attending the last grand wedding of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. The Japanese government was already imposing restrictions on the lifestyle of ordinary citizens and allowing military and civilian police increased influence over the activities of businesses, schools and private citizens.After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of S July MUOS and Japan’s declaration of war on China, the Kempeitai (military police) attempted to remove all traces of Nagasaki’s deep connections with the enemy, cancelling the annual peiron (dragon boat) races and banning the use of firecrackers during the Buddhist Lantern Festival in August MUOS.A month later a civilian defence corps was established in Nagasaki City Hall under Kempeitai supervision to prepare for possible air raids and to organize blackout simulations and anti-air-raid drills.Then, in October, the Japanese government promulgated the ‘national spiritual mobilization movement’ to enhance unity among the Japanese people and to galvanize wartime attitudes. The nationwide effort to strengthen defence systems resulted in an order for the organization of civilian guards and the compulsory establishment of neighbourhood groups called tonarigumi that assisted as a kind of peer-police in weeding out slackers and dissenters. It also precipitated the ‘New Military Secrets Protection Law’, which gave authorities far-reaching powers to arrest and imprison anyone suspected of collecting sensitive information or leaking military secrets to outsiders.OO In the midst of this growing tension, the now fifty-three year- old Robert Walker Jr. married Mabel Shigeko Macmillan. A native of Nagasaki and, like Robert, the product of a British-
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Japanese marriage, Mabel had been living in Shanghai and returned to Nagasaki shortly before the outbreak of war between Japan and China. She had been married previously and brought a daughter named Mary to the marriage. Robert and Mabel began a new life in the house at No. NTB Minamiyamate and were later blessed with two sons,Albert and Denis, born in MUOT and MUPO respectively. On MO December MUOS, news that the Chinese capital of Nanking (Nanjing) had fallen to the Imperial Japanese Army reached Nagasaki and elicited an eruption of joy.The Nagasaki populace, unaware of the atrocities perpetrated by their country- men during the attack, came out onto the streets to join in victory parades and evening lantern processions, and the Nagasaki Nichinichi Shimbun and other newspapers trumpeted felicitations with front-page headlines. Perhaps only the aging Japan Hotel at No. NQ O¯ ura – the last of the large Western-style hotels still operating in the former foreign settlement – had any inkling of the hardships and horrors to come: it burnt to the ground on MU December MUOS, six days after the siege of Nanking, as though succumbing to despair and bidding farewell to international exchange on the back streets of Nagasaki. Now the foreign settlement was little more than a ghost of its former self.The British and American consulates maintained a nominal presence, but most of their time after MUOS was spent issuing passports for departing compatriots and dealing with increasingly hostile Japanese police.The Nagasaki Club, Nagasaki Rowing and Athletic Club, Masonic Lodge, and Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen had ceased to exist or continued only in name, and most of the foreign-run shops and stores that had once lined the streets were gone.The only foreign-run companies still operating were Holme Ringer & Co. and the Great Northern Telegraph Co., both of which were under increasing pressure to close, as well as R.N.Walker & Co., which was spared harassment because of Robert Walker Jr.’s Japanese citizenship.The last foreign bank – the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Nagasaki Branch – had closed in MUOM, and the imposing three-storey building had been sold to Nagasaki Prefecture and turned into a police station. Kwassui Jogakko#, the Methodist school for women, was now the only remaining American mission school in Higashiyamate,OP and its staff and students were participating regularly in Shinto rituals for the war dead and
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send-off ceremonies for troops leaving the port of Nagasaki for China.The school had no choice but to allow the Japanese military to install machine-guns on the roof, which as always commanded a panoramic view of Nagasaki Harbour, and to station Kempeitai officers in the school as supervisors. In April, the American principal Anna White went to the Nagasaki Prefecture Office to receive portraits of the emperor and empress and carried these back to the school for enshrinement.The author of the school history claims that she did this in a very reverent manner, walking ceremoniously and wearing white gloves to carry the portraits, but only three months later she left Japan, and a Japanese (male) teacher assumed the position of principal for the first time since the foundation of the school.OQ The French principal of Kaisei Gakko# – the Catholic mission school for boys established at the crest of the Higashiyamate hillside in MTUN – and many other European priests and teachers also left Nagasaki in MUOS. Most of the old Western-style houses on the Minamiyamate and Higashiyamate hillsides had been sold to Japanese buyers or left to settle into the shade of the old camphor and gingko trees, their shutters closed and doors guarded by garrisons of weeds and creeping vines. On NU March MUOT, a ceremony was held at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard to mark the beginning of a secret building project.After withdrawing from the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty in MUOR, the Imperial Japanese Navy had formulated plans to build the SL,LLL-tonne sister ships Yamato and Musashi, the largest and most formidable battleships ever to swagger across the world’s oceans. Mitsubishi Co., ordered to build the latter, reinforced and modified the No. N building berth at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, added auxiliary facilities and equipment, and mobilized thousands of workers under a strict oath of secrecy. All of the shipbuilding and industrial skills cultivated over the past decades were to be funnelled into the construction and launching of this colossal symbol of Japanese military might.Authorities hid the building berth from view with metal sheets and rope curtains and rolled out a tight blanket of security to ensure that outsiders, particularly foreigners, remained unaware of the activity in the shipyard.To prevent observation from the British and American consulates, the Kempeitai ordered the reclamation of the harbour along the O¯ ura Bund and the construction of a long wooden warehouse directly in front of the
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consulate buildings.This building, which garnered the nickname mekakushi so#ko (‘blindfold warehouse’) because it was used solely for camouflage, vividly symbolized the growing international confrontation in Nagasaki.OR One person seriously affected by the heightened security was Kuraba Tomisaburo#, whose family house on the Minamiyamate hillside – the famous Ipponmatsu – commanded a view not only of the No. N building berth where the Musashi was taking shape but of the entire panorama of the harbour from the mouth of the Urakami River to the islands dotting the entrance to the bay. Kuraba sold the house and surrounding land to the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard on MM April MUOU for the sum of ON,TLL yen and moved with his wife Waka to the house at No. U Minamiyamate, a low-lying lot behind the ice factory where the Nagasaki Hotel once stood.OS The exact circumstances of the transaction remain unclear to this day.The predominant theory is that he succumbed to pressure from the Kempeitai, who were unwilling to have a person with such strong foreign connections living in a house that overlooked the shipyard, but it has also been surmised that he was in dire financial straits at the time and agreed willingly to the sale.OT Whatever the reason, however, Kuraba’s transaction abruptly terminated the family connection with the house. In February MUPL, Fred E.E. Ringer died in Nagasaki, probably sickened as much by the grim situation in Japan as by his chronic alcoholism.Then in August,Vanya Ringer, second son of Sydney Ringer and a junior partner in Holme Ringer & Co., was suddenly arrested by Japanese police on charges of spying.The judgment handed down at the Nagasaki Local Court on MS September MUPL called for a fine of MQL yen and eighteen months of penal servitude, with a five-year stay of execution, on the grounds that Vanya had asked someone about the name of a ship anchored in Nagasaki Harbour and had passed that information to British Consul F.C. Greatrex, thus violating the New Military Secrets Protection Law.Vanya opted to leave Japan with his wife and infant daughter, and he was soon followed by his brother Michael who had been arrested and charged in Shimonoseki on similar charges. The two third-generation descendants of Frederick Ringer later volunteered to serve as officers in the British Indian Army and joined in the fight between their country of nationality and country of birth.OU Sydney Ringer and
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his wife also left Japan for Shanghai in the autumn of MUPL, frustrated and heartbroken but perhaps still hopeful for a quick conclusion to the war with China and a resumption of the activities of the company in Nagasaki. The Great Northern Telegraph Co., the last icon of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, was another organization that succumbed to the escalating pressure.At the end of the decade the company still employed eight foreigners and continued to clutch, not only the rights to Japan’s overseas telegraphy, but also the perpetual leases to a number of choice lots in the former settlement including the main office at No. N Umegasaki, next door to the Nagasaki Post Office.The Japanese government had tried several times over the years to buy out the company’s operations and to gain control of the sea-bottom telegraph cables connecting Japan with the continent, but these attempts had invariably failed.As international tensions came to a head in MUPL, the company finally acquiesced and transferred its rights and property to the Japanese government. The local newspaper Nagasaki Nichinichi Shimbun rallied behind the Japanese cause, pointing out in its editorial columns that,‘Since MTSM, when it laid cables from Nagasaki to Vladivostok and Shanghai, the Great Northern Telegraph Co. has monopolized Japan’s international telecommunications and ignored the repeated pleas of our government for an amendment to the humiliating treaty in force. Its office stands on a Nagasaki corner like a relic of the foreign settlement years, exempt from government control, transmitting and receiving biased messages that are detrimental to our country.’PL Japanese authorities took control of the Nagasaki facilities on M June MUPL, snipping the last thread of privileges enjoyed by foreigners under the umbrella of extraterritoriality.PM On M November MUPL, exactly five months after the Great Northern Telegraph Co.’s capitulation, the Musashi slipped into Nagasaki Harbour surrounded by an ominous hush. Authorities halted all harbour traffic that day and blockaded streets and lookouts from which the launching might be observed. All citizens living in houses facing the water were ordered to close their rain doors and shutters, to draw indoor curtains and to stay inside. Even the approximately M,TLL military and civilian police on guard turned away from the harbour at the time of launching and refrained from looking at the battleship. To divert the attention of foreigners, a pair of policemen disguised as census
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takers conducted a visit to each home at the pre-designated moment. Until its departure a year and a half later, the Musashi anchored at a rigging dock in Nagasaki Harbour to undergo final adjustments. Passengers on ships to outlying islands were forbidden to go out on deck while still in Nagasaki Harbour, and they had to draw black curtains across the windows when leaving or entering the port.PN The fact that not a single photograph or sketch has been found showing the battleship in Nagasaki Harbour indicates the extent to which security measures were enforced. As in other Japanese cities, the citizens of Nagasaki began to suffer severe deprivations as Japan funnelled its resources into the war effort. A letter dated NL November MUPL and sent by Kuraba Tomisaburo#’s wife Waka to her nephewYoshidaYoshio in Tokyo provides a glimpse into the situation here. In deft but slightly unsteady Japanese script, Waka thanks Yoshida for a gift of persimmons he sent from Tokyo and then writes as follows: The lack of various products is becoming very distressing. For several days now there has been no charcoal available in Nagasaki, although huge loads of it can be seen piled on ships and trains coming into the city.All of the charcoal has been purchased by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and not a single bag can be obtained by anyone. Next month they will distribute tickets and begin selling it, but I hear that the rations will be far from sufficient. Eggs have also completely disappeared from Nagasaki. I haven’t tasted one in more than two months … I wonder where all the eggs in Nagasaki Prefecture have gone. Potatoes can no longer be seen in the markets either. Everything has become so difficult. But I suppose we have no choice but to endure the hardships and to accept all this as part of government policy.PO Tomisaburo# and Waka tried to carry on their social life as before but found themselves increasingly hampered by the Kempeitai, who now wielded control over the entire spectrum of daily affairs. Everyone was subject to the bullying presence of these military police, but the homes of people with foreign connections were kept under special surveillance. When Tomisaburo# orWaka left the house and went into the city, the police followed them and took careful note of the people to whom they spoke.These people were later interrogated about the content of the conversations. In Shanghai, Wilson Walker’s widow Charlotte and her daughters and grandchildren also fretted over the deterioration in
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international relations and the political unrest sending shivers through the city. Since leaving Nagasaki in MUNL, Charlotte had been living in the Shanghai International Settlement with her two single daughters. Her eldest daughter, who had lost her British husband in MUNP, was rearing five children on her own but showed no inclination to quit Shanghai.After the outbreak of fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces in the summer of MUOS, the consulates of the Western powers decided to evacuate their citizens, hustling everyone onto steamships to Hong Kong. Among the fleeing masses were a now seventy-seven-year-old Charlotte and her daughters and granddaughters. Charlotte’s granddaughter Joyce, at eighteen the youngest of the family in Shanghai, remembered the MUOS upheaval as follows: Britishers were advised to leave Shanghai and my mother, two sisters and I left for Hong Kong as did my grandmother [Charlotte] and her two daughters.We met on the Bund to board a ferry to the Empress of Asia lying a little away from the Bund. While going to board her, snipers were firing across the bow of the ferry and later the Empress. It was not a very comfortable journey to Hong Kong as we were in the hold of the ship.On arrival in Hong Kong we made for Kowloon and had rooms on Nathan Road. We took our meals at a guest house nearby. My grandmother and her daughters were accommodated on the Hong Kong side. I found a position with the Diocesan School in Kowloon and my sisters also had jobs, so we didn’t see my grandmother and aunts. Grannie caught a chill and died not long afterwards [NR September MUOS] and was buried in HappyValley Cemetery.PP The Walker family and other foreign residents returned to Shanghai after about six weeks and found their homes and belongings for the most part intact, but by the autumn of MUPM Japanese forces were entering foreign premises at will and ignoring the complaints of the municipal administration. On T December MUPM, the foreign community awoke to hear radio reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war against Britain and America. Japanese forces immediately swooped down on Shanghai, took over the International Settlement and French Concession, and, in apparent imitation of the Nazi regime in Germany,compelled foreign residents to wear red armbands. Over the following months, the citizens of enemy countries still residing in the city, including one last Walker daughter and Sydney and Aileen Ringer, were rounded up and
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interned in one of the concentration camps established in the Yangtze River delta. The situation inVictoria, British Columbia was the Shanghai situation in reverse: people of Japanese ancestry were experiencing escalating hostility from their white neighbours. Although people with Japanese names and a poor grasp of English bore the brunt of this antagonism, the morbid change in Japan’s relationship with Canada and Britain also brought suffering to Robert N.Walker’s daughters, convincing them to hide their Japanese ancestry at all costs. One of the ways they did this was to religiously conceal the truth from their children, never mentioning their deceased grandmother Sato or displaying anything related to Japan in the house. One of the daughters even resorted to telling people that her black hair and dark eyes were inherited from Spanish ancestors.PQ Robert N.Walker died in Victoria on NP April MUPM, three days shy of his ninetieth birthday and soon enough to avoid the shock of hearing about the outbreak of war between the Allied countries and Japan. In July MUPM, some five months before the outbreak of war, all assets of American, British, Chinese and Dutch residents of Japan were frozen, and most of the remaining foreigners hastily closed their offices, gathered their belongings, and sailed away from the country.After the attack on Pearl Harbor on T December MUPM (Japan time), the Kempeitai combed Nagasaki and environs for foreign stragglers. These included Sara Couch, an elderly American missionary who had staunchly refused to leave the house she shared with her Japanese colleague Tomegawa Jun.PR Three British retirees named Edward Murch,Alfred Gabb and Edwin Parker, who were living with their Japanese wives in or near Nagasaki, also chose internment over repatriation.The last Briton remaining in the former foreign settlement and naively embracing the illusion of privilege and safety on the sun-washed hillsides was Alcidie Eva Ringer, the sixty-four-year-old widow of Fred E.E. Ringer. Policemen appeared at the family house at No. MP Minamiyamate (the former Alt House) on the very day of the Pearl Harbor attack and escorted her to the Umegasaki Police Station, where they interrogated her and charged her with espionage on the grounds that she had listened to radio reports from Shanghai.Two weeks later she was transferred to the city prison and kept in solitary confinement until April the following year. On NM July MUPN, after spending three months with other
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internees in the Seibo-no-Kishi school (founded the previous decade by Fr. Maksymilian Kolbe), she was allowed to return to her house to prepare for evacuation.A week later she sailed to Yokohama with the last British consul of Nagasaki, F.C. Greatrex, who had also been interned in the above school. Both Ringer and Greatrex were passengers on one of the ‘exchange ships’ that carried foreign nationals away from Japan in the summer of MUPN and eliminated the last possibility for reconciliation between Britain and Japan.PS
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9
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THEJAPANESEARMED forces originally assigned to guard areas of southern Manchuria leased by Japan from China after the Russo-Japanese War occupied several strategic centres in the country in GOIG, justifying their actions as retaliation for attacks by Chinese insurgents. A number of serious domestic problems lurked behind this blatant aggression.The population of Japan was increasing at a rate of about one million a year but industries were languishing in the midst of a crippling economic depression, natural resources were scarce, emigration had been limited by exclusion from the United States and other Pacific rim countries, and peasants in farming and fishing villages were eking out a living on the threshold of starvation.The extension of Japanese jurisdiction to Manchuria promised to solve these problems by providing an outlet for the surplus population and access to rich sources of oil, coal, minerals, timber and grain. In early GOIH, the Japanese government tried to legalize the claim on Manchuria by fusing three Manchurian provinces into an independent state called Manchukuo and by installing the deposed ‘last emperor’ Puyi as chief executive. The port of Antung had been under the Japanese thumb for
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only four months when Wilson Walker Jr. died there at the age of fifty-one. He had divorced his first wife from Nagasaki and a few years later married another Japanese woman namedYamashita Nami.Yamashita was a native of Obama, the village on Chijiwa Bay in Nagasaki Prefecture famous for its hot springs and proximity to the mountain resort of Unzen.Wilson and Nami and their five children had been happy and secure in Antung, Wilson making a comfortable living as a customs officer and English teacher.As a result of his death, however,Yamashita was forced to return to Japan with her children, now ranging in age from two to eleven years, and to seek shelter with relatives in Obama. Her father was sympathetic, but when he died in GOIJ she faced not only poverty but also the harsh mood of nationalism and the antagonism of neighbours who ostracized her for marrying a foreigner. She soon gave the children up, and each was raised in a separate household amid untold hardships. Her eldest son,Yamashita Masato, was drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army in GOJG at the age of nineteen and despatched to the battlefields of South-East Asia, where he was forced to dodge bullets and mortar shells fired by the compatriots of his British ancestors.G In the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the police in Nagasaki cracked down harder than ever on ‘unpatriotic activities’, which encompassed anything and everything connected with the enemy.The police forced Robert Walker Jr. to pull down the R.N.Walker & Co. sign at No. GG Oura because it was written in the language of the enemy.With a snap of the finger, they also forced the Walkers’ Japanese maid and gardener to quit their jobs and never to contact their employers again. Like Kuraba Tomisaburo# and his wife, Robert and Mabel Walker’s Japanese citizenship exempted them from internment in the concentration camps. But the police imposed a heavy mantle of surveillance on their movements and contacts with neighbours in order to prevent anti-Japanese subterfuge. Rather than making official checks, they used tactics like posing as electricians or plumbers in order to gain entrance to theWalker and Kuraba homes and to look for signs of betrayal. While Robert remained under a state of virtual house arrest, Mabel was allowed to make excursions into town to line up for rice and soy sauce rations and to buy groceries in the markets, but police in civilian dress tailed her each time and took careful note
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of every person she encountered. Recounting these experiences later, Mabel said that she endured the scrutiny of the military police by pretending that they were bodyguards. Robert also commented wryly that, if nothing else, the notorious military police were good baby-sitters: whenever little Albert strayed from the family property, they could always be relied upon to bring him safely home. On HN March GOJH, all of the perpetual leases still in effect in the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement were annulled according to Government Ordinance No. HMH.H The total area of land subject to perpetual leases in Nagasaki amounted to over IN,FFF tsubo or about thirty-one acres, a large portion of which belonged to the Ringer family.I According to the Kyu#tochidaicho# (Old Land Register), the British Consulate at No. L O¯ ura was seized by Japanese authorities on K May the same year and the rights to the property unilaterally transferred to Nagasaki City.This may have satisfied the Japanese government because it erased the last traces of the ‘unequal treaties’ of old, but it clearly violated international laws and agreements and all but guaranteed a postwar backlash. The audacious advances of the Japanese armed forces abroad proved brief. In April GOJH, only days after the enactment of the above ordinance, a squadron of American BHK bombers flew from an aircraft carrier in broad daylight and conducted air raids on the cities of Tokyo, Nagoya and Kobe, marking the beginning of a reign of terror that would soon bring destruction and death to virtually every major Japanese city.The naval battle at Midway in June GOJH and the fall of Guadalcanal Island in February the following year precipitated a turn in the course of the war. Routed on land and vanquished at sea, the Japanese forces switched to the defensive while their American adversaries launched a concerted drive northward, capturing one Pacific stronghold after another and pressing with increasing confidence and ferocity towards the Japanese home islands. In October GOJI, the Japanese Ministry of Home Affairs issued an order for the construction of air-raid shelters throughout Japan. Civilian groups began to dig these cave shelters in cliffs and hillsides or under the floors of buildings, and families followed suit in gardens and homes. One of the Nagasaki citizens to follow the directive was Robert Walker Jr. By GOJJ he had single-handedly gouged a two- chamber shelter from an incline in his garden at No.HNB Minamiyamate.
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On J May GOJI, Kuraba Tomisaburo#’s wife Waka died in Nagasaki at the age of sixty-eight, and her remains were buried at Sakamoto International Cemetery in the plot beside the grave of Thomas and Tsuru Glover.The gravestone was a typical Japanese- style stone with an epitaph rendered solely in Chinese characters, presenting quite a contrast with all the European gravestones surrounding it. The absence of an English inscription is attributable to the blanket ban on enemy languages imposed by Japanese authorities since the beginning of the war. The American forces launched air raids from bases in the Chinese interior for the first time in early GOJJ, using giant B-HO Superfortresses to unload bombs over the industrial belt in northern Kyushu. On GG April that year they targeted Nagasaki for the first time. A light rain was falling around midnight when the city’s air-raid sirens and fire bells frantically reported the arrival of enemy aircraft. People fled into shelters, searchlights scanned the dark sky and anti-aircraft guns crackled while a squadron of B-HOs roared over the city and released their bombs into the clouds. Fortunately for Nagasaki the results of this air raid were poor: only thirteen people – Nagasaki’s first civilian victims of the SecondWorldWar – were killed and less than a dozen houses destroyed. Although fires broke out in a few adjacent neighbourhoods, the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and the industrial zone north of Nagasaki Railway Station emerged unscathed, most of the bombs having fallen harmlessly into the damp forests of surrounding mountains. By now little was left of the vaunted Imperial Japanese Navy or the merchant fleet that Thomas Glover and the Walker brothers had helped to create and foster.The Musashi sank under a torrent of bombs, torpedoes and bullets in the Sibuyan Sea, Leyte Gulf, on HJ October GOJJ, taking half of its crew to a watery grave. Its battle career had been shorter than the time it spent undergoing final touches in Nagasaki Harbour.The sister ships Nagasaki-maru and Shanghai-maru, the last carriers of passengers and cargo between Japan and the continent in an age of peace that now seemed impossibly distant, also joined the debris of Japan’s failed aspirations on the bottom of the East China Sea.J During the early months of GOJK, the Nagasaki air-raid sirens had little rest because the city lay squarely in the path of the B-HO squadrons on bombing missions to other Japanese cities.After the subjugation of Japanese forces on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the
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bomb-laden aircraft had free passage to the home islands, and the Japanese people could only sit and wait for the relentless carpet bombings that followed. In a desperate attempt to ward off the inevitable, the Japanese government announced a reduction in rations of staples and encouraged the consumption of alternative foods such as acorns, tea dregs and weeds. Pumpkin stalks, tree bark, potato vines and other fare considered inedible before were now a common sight on Nagasaki dinner tables. If the Japanese citizens of Nagasaki were subject to deprivations like this, it is easy to imagine the desperate predicament of Allied prisoners-of-war. From as early as GOJH, British, Dutch, American and Australian soldiers captured in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands were brought to Nagasaki and interned in one of two POW camps supplying labour to the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and Kawanami Shipyard on Ko#yagi Island.To this day little reliable information on the numbers, names and nationalities of the Nagasaki prisoners-of-war is available. It is certain in any case that several hundred Allied soldiers suffered in the Nagasaki POW camps and that as many as a third of them died from illness, malnutrition, injury or execution.The grim POW experience is a sad book-end to the story on the shelf of Nagasaki history,a story that begins with the GNKJ visit of Admiral Stirling and the conclusion of the first friendship treaty between Britain and Japan. Among the British prisoners-of-war was a native of Newfoundland named Jack Ford who volunteered for service in the Royal Air Force and found himself in Nagasaki in December GOJH along with hundreds of other British soldiers captured during the Fall of Singapore.K Ford was assigned to work at the Kawanami Shipyard (Camp Fukuoka No.H) on Ko#yagi Island and spent the remaining thirty-three months of the war enduring long hours of hard labour, brutal treatment at the hands of Japanese guards, and a diet that pushed him to the brink of starvation. He later recalled the punishments regularly meted out to prisoners at the camp and the shipyard where he toiled: Everybody knew exactly where his work station was and he was expected to turn up for work on schedule.The only reason for the prisoner not turning up was if he was hauled from the ranks for talking or whistling.When these so-called offences took place, the IJN [Imperial Japanese Navy guards] would drag the POW from the group, and sometimes the prisoner pleaded for mercy, but of
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course, such pleas were ignored.They would take him to the guard house where they would administer a severe beating and return him to his job site. Sometimes, the prisoner was not able to stand up when he was brought back. The hard thing about these constant beatings was that the rest of us couldn’t do anything about them. We just had to stand there and watch and say nothing.L Ford also recalled a Dutch prisoner who came down with Hansen’s disease (leprosy) and was confined to a cage like a dog, his only consolation being a tin whistle that the guards allowed him to keep. Every morning when the other prisoners marched by the cage on their way to work, the Dutchman played a tune on the whistle to encourage his comrades.‘When we got to our work stations we would still be in good spirits and feeling some satisfaction that we had put one over on the Japanese’, remembered Ford.‘The tune the Dutchman played day after day was There’ll Always be an England.’M Nagasaki remained mostly exempt from the air raids pounding other Japanese cities in the final months of the war. However, the workers at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard had to keep a watchful eye on the sky because American Hellcats conducted occasional sting raids, flying in pairs or alone over the eastern suburbs of the city, turning their engines off above Mt Nabekanmuri and streaking low over the former foreign settlement and Nagasaki Harbour to strafe the shipyard with machine-gun fire, scattering spent cartridges onto the rooftops and gardens of Minamiyamate. Robert Walker Jr.’s son Albert recalled his father picking up one of these cartridges with a bemused shake of the head and commenting that the American aircraft carriers must be very close – and Japanese resistance pathetically low – if these small planes could continue their daredevil attacks unhindered.N Except for the irritation of minor air raids in the early summer of GOJK, the factories in Nagasaki were able to continue their frenzied efforts to squeeze torpedoes and kamikaze airplane parts from dwindling resources.With the supply of iron ore and other metals from abroad severed and domestic production crippled by the depleted workforce, Japan stripped itself of anything and everything metallic, from centuries-old temple bells to samurai swords, car bumpers and kitchen utensils. Some of the first things to go in Nagasaki were the fences, plaques and other iron
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embellishments in the international cemeteries, quite an irony considering that some of the desecrated graves belonged to foreigners who had helped to establish Japan’s steel industry. On N August GOJK the citizens of Nagasaki conducted their usual monthly observance of the ‘Day of the Great Imperial Edict,’that is, the anniversary of the N December GOJG declaration of war.The newspapers of this day carried front page articles informing readers that a small B-HO squadron had attacked the city of Hiroshima on L August with a new-type bomb and had inflicted ‘considerable’ damage. At GG.FH a.m. the following day, an atomic bomb released from the bay of the American B-HO Bock’s Car exploded in the sky over Nagasaki, generating a ball of fire as bright as the sun. Robert Walker Jr. had shepherded his family into the garden air-raid shelter just in time to avoid the flash of heat and the blast of wind that followed.The house at No. HNB Minamiyamate was located more than five kilometres from the hypocentre of the explosion and so escaped destruction, but the windows, which provided a direct view up the Urakami valley towards the hypocentre, were smashed in by the blast, the ceramic roof tiles blown off like flecks of dirt, and the surrounding neighbourhoods thrown into a state of chaos.The entire northern section of Nagasaki, meanwhile, was transformed into a flattened, smoking wasteland strewn with the dead and dying, some two-thirds of the city population either killed or injured by the explosion. Jack Ford also felt the concussion and saw the mushroom cloud churn up into the sky from his outdoor work station on Ko#yagi Island.Although located a considerable distance from Nagasaki, the island was exposed directly to the shock wave that rolled out from the hypocentre, smashing windows as far away as seventeen kilometres. Ford described his experience as follows: We did not hear any air raid warning, no siren sounded on our island, nothing to suggest that there was any enemy aircraft in the area.We had not heard the sound of anything until GG.FH when we were startled by a tremendous blast and immense heat, followed by complete turmoil in the dockyard with pieces of glass, stones, wood, and asbestos flying in all directions, and the employees, who were Koreans as well as Japanese women and children, were screaming, cowering, and running in all directions because they didn’t know what had happened across the harbour at Nagasaki. When the bomb exploded, I had just stepped away from the guillotine where I was cutting sheet metal.Thoughts of some hot,
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green tea came abruptly to an end when I was knocked flat by a terrific blast. I lost consciousness for a few moments, but I recovered and quickly got to my feet.When I got to my feet, I looked up at the sky away from the mushroom cloud that was rapidly spreading out and moving upwards … Some of us wondered what it might have been.We had not heard a bomb since we left Singapore, and basically we got the fright of our lives. We thought it may be the end of the world. It was that bad … On that day we were not even considering that there could be a bomb attack on Nagasaki, and as for an atomic bomb attack, well that was not even in our vocabulary.O The prisoners-of-war interned at Camp Fukuoka No. GJ were not as fortunate, because their living quarters and work place were located in Saiwai-machi only G,MFF metres from the atomic bomb hypocentre and so incurred the full brunt of the heat flash and blast. Like its sister facility on Ko#yagi Island, this camp had been serving as a corral for hundreds of Allied prisoners dragged to Japan from the battlefields of Southeast Asia and forced to work at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard and other factories. It is thought that the majority of the GMF to HFF prisoners still in the Saiwai-machi camp at the time of the atomic bombing suffered injuries of varying severity, but only eight deaths have been ascertained.GF The only confirmed British death in the Nagasaki atomic bombing was that of Ronald F.Shaw, an RAF corporal crushed by falling debris at Camp Fukuoka No. GJ.GG The vast majority of other foreign fatalities went unknown, the corpses joining the thousands of unidentifiable human remains decomposing in the wasteland. Ronald E. Bryer, a British internee at the camp who emerged unscathed only because he had been digging an air-raid shelter at the time of the explosion, described his experiences in the chaos after the atomic bombing: The whole city was a mass of burning debris. I had seen with my own eyes the destruction of London by German bombers, and so I knew that it was no ordinary bomb that caused this devastation over such a large area.There were people moving in the rubble of buildings, so I descended the hill intending to try to save whoever among my comrades had survived.The fires were beginning to rage and it was very difficult to maneuvre through the tangle of electric lines and wires.After a while I found one of my comrades with his legs pinned under the debris. After a great effort I managed to free him and take him to the hillside where I found a
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cave. More than half the cave was flooded with water, but it had to serve as a resting place for the time being.After depositing him in the cave, I returned to the POW camp to rescue the Dutch officer who was serving as our commander. I helped carry him on a board to the cave, but he had a serious wound on his head and he died before we got there.The last time I made the trip to the camp, everything in sight was burning and it was only with the greatest effort that I made it back. I will never forget the sight of that terrible destruction from the top of the hill.When the sun suddenly peaked blood-red from behind the haze I thought that it was another attack and threw myself down onto the ground. I spent the night with an Indonesian soldier who had been blinded and burned by the bomb.The neighbourhoods below our hillside refuge burned all night long, and we were later rounded up by Japanese soldiers that came in from outside the city.The next morning we were taken to the area beyond the gas tanks, where we flattened out metal sheets and used these to build a temporary station for the wounded.The blazing heat of the sun joined with the heat from the fires all around to make our work unbearable. Every night for several days, those among us who were able to move carried corpses from the ruins of buildings, stacked wood, and cremated the corpses in groups of about HF.After that we were ordered to move to vacated barracks on a hill outside central Nagasaki. It was a huge building and we occupied only a small section. One day an elderly Japanese guard came along and said what sounded like senso owari.I could tell that he was telling us that the war had ended, so I ran to tell the others. Nobody could believe it, but the next day a Japanese officer confirmed this, and saluted us before leading his troops down towards the city.Thus we were finally freed.GH
Less than a week after the Nagasaki atomic bombing, Emperor Hirohito announced surrender over national radio, bringing the cruellest war in human history to a close and drawing a deep sigh from the Japanese people – a sigh of despair tinged with relief at finally being liberated from the terror of air raids and from the suffocating clutch of military rule.As Jack Ford points out, the civilian population of Nagasaki never mistreated the prisoners-of- war, either during the war or in the aftermath of the atomic bombing, because they had been tyrannized just as brutally by the military personnel stationed here. On the morning of HL August, when rumours about the landing of Allied troops were darting around Nagasaki, Robert Walker Jr. and his now seven year-old son Albert went to visit
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Kuraba Tomisaburo#, who since the death of his wife Waka in GOJI had been living alone in his house at No. O Minamiyamate.To his horror,Walker found Kuraba dead in one of the rooms of the house: He had strangled his dogs and then hung himself with a length of clothes line.GI No suicide note was found, but it is safe to assume that Kuraba chose death, not only because of the desperate situation in Nagasaki and his terrible solitude, but also because he feared that his adoption of Japanese citizenship would be construed as an act of treason by the British and American victors preparing to land on Japanese shores. He was a man of two cultures, and the prospect of having to take sides was too much to bear. Walker collected lumber from the surrounding neighbour- hoods and built a pyre on the Sagarimatsu backstreet to cremate the remains of Kuraba Tomisaburo#. Standing vigil over the fire, he probably recalled images from a time when this familiar stretch of backstreet echoed with voices in various languages and hummed with the business of international exchange. His thoughts also lingered, after returning to the stark reality of the present, on the fact that his family members were now the last surviving residents of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and that his hometown had suffered damages from which it might never recover. TheWalker clan also added a name to the death toll.Wilson Walker’s grandson Yamashita Masato had managed to survive the jungle warfare and to catch a ship back to Japan amid the chaos of surrender. But like many of his fellow soldiers, he died of malnutrition and untreated tropical illness in a military hospital in Kobe without being united with his mother. His ashes are enshrined today at Yasukuni Jinja, the Tokyo Shinto shrine dedicated to the spirits of deceased Japanese military personnel. While Allied aircraft soared over Nagasaki dropping packages of canned meat and biscuits and chocolate into the lap of the liberated POW camps, American hospital ships arrived in Nagasaki to pick up prisoners-of-war and anchored at the same wharf that only a few years earlier had bustled with the arrival and departure of the Nagasaki-Shanghai steamers. Britons Jack Ford and Ronald E. Bryer were among the prisoners rescued from the camps and hustled out of the city, the former gazing at the barracks of Camp Fukuoka No.H as he passed and thinking to himself,‘Nagasaki, you son of a bitch, pardon the expression.’GJ
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The battalions of the American Occupation force followed on HI September GOJK. Some HK,FFF soldiers of the Sixth Army Second Marine Division landed at Dejima Wharf over the following days and began the task of establishing Occupation facilities, confiscating weapons and initiating measures to prevent the outbreak of disease in the squalor of the devastated city.The people of Nagasaki had expected the victors to launch a campaign of murder and rape as soon as they stepped ashore, so they gazed in astonishment at the troops marching through the city in good order.They also noted the jeeps, trucks and other American military hardware, the shiploads of canned food and flour that piled up like mountains on Dejima Wharf, and the sturdy garrison buildings that teams of healthy-looking soldiers threw up overnight on the waterfront. Comparing these to their own destitute conditions, they nodded in understanding at the outcome of the war.GK Nagasaki was still in a state of paralysis. Most of the tens of thousands of corpses lying in the rubble or festering on river banks had been collected and cremated, but the stench of death and conflagration hung in the air as though permanently imprinted there.The northern half of the city was so devastated that it was difficult to discern even the line of former streets.The surrounding hillsides were stripped of vegetation and the soil contaminated with residual radiation, and a large proportion of the surviving population was homeless. Although the atomic bomb damage was concentrated in the northern suburb, the Nagasaki Prefecture Office, Nagasaki District Court and a large number of other public buildings in central Nagasaki had been destroyed in secondary fires.The buildings in the former foreign settlement had also suffered damage from the blast but, due to their distance from the hypocentre and the protection of hillsides and canals, were intact for the most part.Those abandoned and uninhabited from before the war were now serving as impromptu receptacles for the people trudging out of the burned out areas or beginning to arrive, stupefied and bedraggled, from former Japanese colonial outposts in China and Korea. To provide space for offices and private residences, the Americans requisitioned a number of buildings and houses in the city, summarily evicting anyone who happened to inhabit them. The many Western-style buildings remaining in the former foreign settlement of course provided ideal accommodations.The
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former Glover House, sold by Kuraba Tomisaburo# to the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard in GOIO, had suffered minor damage as a result of the atomic bombing but remained standing on its hillside perch overlooking Nagasaki Harbour.The Occupation forces requisitioned it for use as an officers’ residence on the very day of the landing.The Ringer family houses at No. H and No. GJ Minamiyamate were also requisitioned and cleared of Japanese residents. Both of these buildings, as well as the company office at No. M O¯ ura, had been occupied by employees of the Kawanami Shipyard where, ironically, Jack Ford and a large number of other British prisoners-of-war had struggled to stay alive during the war.The Western-style dormitories of the mission schools in the former foreign settlement were used as barracks for soldiers, and the Nagasaki Customs office on the waterfront in Senba-machi was converted into Occupation headquarters. The brick and stone building of the former Nagasaki British Consulate at No. L O¯ ura also remained intact, still shadowed by the makeshift warehouses erected as screens during the construction of the battleship Musashi. Japanese employees of Holme Ringer & Co. had served as custodians during the war, but the building was in a severe state of disrepair when representatives of the United Kingdom Liaison Mission in Japan finally inspected the property and submitted a report to the British Embassy in March GOJL. The mission instructed the Japanese government to arrange for all the windows and doors to be boarded up as a stopgap measure to prevent burglary and further damage.GL It was clear in everyone’s mind that the consulate would never be reopened, just as Nagasaki would never recover as the principal port for international trade in western Japan. The American Occupation personnel were stunned to find Robert Walker Jr. at No. HNB Minamiyamate and to discover that a family with English names had been living in Nagasaki throughout the war.They provided the Walker family with food and supplies, placed a guard at the gate to their house, and employed Mabel’s daughter Mary as an interpreter. In the course of their investigations about war crimes, the Americans also frequently brought handcuffed former military police and other Japanese to the house for identification, but Robert invariably said that he had never seen them before. Robert and Mabel were exhausted and sickened by the years of conflict, and they firmly
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rejected any opportunity to participate in the postwar backlash of hate and revenge.GM The Occupation forces established a ‘Military Government Team’ after the departure of the Sixth Army and worked in coordination with the local government to erase wartime attitudes and convey the message of democracy. One of the American personnel was Captain Joseph C. Goldsby, an engineer who had arrived in Nagasaki in September GOJK with the Hnd Marine Division of the Lth Army. Goldsby’s wife Barbara joined him from the United States after the shift in Occupation policy in September GOJL, and the couple moved into the house at No.GJ Minamiyamate, the former residence of Alcidie Ringer. Goldsby was granted an honourable discharge from the army in August GOJM, but he stayed in Nagasaki with his wife to assume new duties as a civilian employee. It was at this juncture that Joseph and Barbara Goldsby moved into the Glover House and became the last people to inhabit that historic building.GN Around the time of the move, Goldsby posed for a photograph with two colleagues in front of the house. Pencilled on the back of the photograph is an inscription that reads,‘Mme. Butterfly House, GOJM’. Nothing has been found in pre-Second WorldWar sources, including the letters, photograph albums and other documents of the Glover family, to indicate any connection between the house and the story, play or opera Madame Butterfly. The words pencilled on the back of Joseph Goldsby’s GOJM photograph were obviously born from the imagination of Occupation personnel who were captivated by the building and its beautiful surroundings, who easily imagined a distraught Cho- Cho-san looking out over the harbour and waiting for ‘One Fine Day’ when Lieutenant Pinkerton’s ship would reappear, but who had no knowledge of the history of the house or its former owners. In the spring of GOJN, a Mainichi newspaper reporter and photographer visited Barbara Goldsby and asked her to pose for a photograph in the front garden of the former Glover House.GO On L August of the same year, an article entitled ‘House of “Madam Butterfly” Discovered’ appeared in The Mainichi (the newspaper’s national English-language edition) along with the photograph of Goldsby posing in front of the house with a paper parasol held over her shoulder, apparently in imitation of the tragic heroine of the opera. The full text of the article is as follows:
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NAGASAKI , Aug. K — The house in which ‘Chocho-san’, heroine of the famous opera ‘Madam Butterfly’ by Puccini lived and ended her life tragically has been discovered on the eve of the cultural festival commemorating the third anniversary of the atom bombing of this city.The house, a pseudo-western style building, is situated at GH Minami Yamate-cho [sic, it is actually No. I Minamiyamate], and all data and information indicated it to be the most probable house in which ‘Madam Butterfly’ lived.The credit for this historical discovery goes to Hachiro Shimauchi and other native historians, who have conducted the search with undying enthusiasm on the theory that the girl whose tragic life was adapted into the famous opera actually existed.A plan is under way to construct a memorial tower within the ‘house’, to be completed before the JFFth anniversary of the arrival of St. Francis Xavier in April, next year.The ‘house’ and its beautiful garden will be used in minute details as the scene of the opera ‘Madam Butterfly’ to be presented by the Nagato Miho opera company at the Tokyo Theatre beginning August HN, this year. (The photo shows the ‘Madam Butterfly residence’ and its beautiful garden. Strolling in the garden is Mrs. Goldsby, who now occupies this house.)HF The writer says that ‘all the data and information’ indicate that the building is the ‘most probable house in which “Madam Butterfly” lived’, but he gives no idea as to what this information might be. He also says nothing about the Glover family, underlining the supposition that the prewar history of the building had nothing to do with the ‘Madame Butterfly House’ naming. It is puzzling that none of the ‘native historians’ remembered or cared to mention Kuraba Tomisaburo#, the former owner of the house who had died under such tragic circumstances only three years earlier. The falsehood of the ‘Madame Butterfly House’ naming did not go unnoticed.Among the observers who condemned the linking of the former Glover House with the opera was Harold S. Williams, an Australian resident of Kobe since GOGO and an authority on the history of the former foreign settlements of Japan. In an essay entitled Miss Butterfly and Miss Chrysanthemum Williams wrote: At first when the Nagasaki City authorities decided to whip up the tourist trade by putting on the ‘Madame Butterfly House’ hoax, they described it rather obliquely, or shall we say with calculated ambiguity. But now the gloves are off.The Butterfly
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romance, we are now being told, really happened in the Glover mansion, and both the lady and the house are now given a prominent place in the tourist attractions along with the memorial to the twenty-six Christian martyrs, and the other truly historic monuments of Nagasaki’s past.We say this in sorrow more than in anger, because we always receive the most kindly treatment from all the officials there whose assistance we seek in our researches. It is sad to know that most of the tourists, both Japanese and foreigners, who visit the delightful villa overlooking the harbour, leave believing they have seen the actual house wherein the Madame Butterfly romance and tragedy occurred, and they will remember it as such, rather than as the home built in the early days by the highly respected British merchant,Thomas B. Glover, who lived there with his wife and children.HG Even Shimauchi Hachiro, the local historian who had concluded that the Glover House was ‘the most probable house in which Madame Butterfly lived’, later corrected this claim and tried to mop up the damage.When the Nagato Miho Opera Company performed Madame Butterfly in Nagasaki in November GOKI, Shimauchi wrote as follows in a message published in the opera programme: Local historians argued vehemently about whether or not Madame Butterfly is fiction.They argued even more vehemently about whether the Glover House was the real setting. It was Ishida Hisashi, chief judge of the Nagasaki Court and myself who, in the midst of these arguments, suggested that the Glover House be designated as the setting. Our reason was that the house is aesthetically appropriate.As a result we now have the ‘Garden Connected with Madame Butterfly’, but I have regrets about this, and I have been severely castigated over it, and so I think that the naming should be changed to the ‘Garden Reminiscent of Madame Butterfly’.HH Despite this clear-cut disavowal by Shimauchi and the appeals of historians like Harold S.Williams, no efforts were made in Nagasaki to change the designation of the house or to dissuade tourists from drawing a connection between the Glover family and the opera. On the contrary, the tendency to choose atmosphere over history only grew stronger in subsequent years. The Madame Butterfly theme was used extensively in the tourism industry. Even guides showing people around the house were required to learn the aria ‘One Fine Day’ and to sing it for the entertainment of customers. For people who remembered the
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former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, however, it was painfully clear that the Madame Butterfly craze came in the same parcel with hamburgers, Mickey Mouse, professional wrestling, Westerns, striptease and all the other Americana flooding Japan in the wake of defeat. After the departure of the Occupation forces, the former Glover House reverted to the possession of the Mitsubishi Co. which resumed its use of the building and gardens as a recreation facility for employees.As a result of all the publicity, however, tourists began to flock to the Minamiyamate hillside for a glimpse of the house, ignoring the ‘no trespassing’ signs at the entrance. Nagasaki City, in turn, began to promote this and other local attractions as a way to lift itself out of the misery and poverty of the postwar period.The efforts of the city to find a new path to prosperity through tourism were rewarded in October GOKF when Nagasaki won first place in the city category of the ‘Best Hundred Sightseeing Places in Japan’ contest. Needless to say, the ‘exotic’ atmosphere lingering in the former foreign settlement was the deciding factor in this award. Sydney and Aileen Ringer returned to Nagasaki in early GOKG after enduring the hardships of Chinese concentration camps for three years and waiting, penniless, in Shanghai for Japan’s doors to open. Although relieved to find their house at No. H Minamiyamate still standing, they sighed at the absence of their furniture and other belongings, apparently looted by former inhabitants fleeing in the wake of Japan’s defeat.As accustomed as they were to the overcrowded conditions of refugee camps, they also reeled in shock at the number of squatters living on the property.They decided to take up temporary lodgings in the Beach Hotel in Mogi, a facility that they had patronized for decades before the war and which, in GOKG, was the only hotel in Nagasaki capable of accommodating and feeding foreign guests. On HM April GOKG, Sydney wrote as follows to the UK Reparations and Restitution Delegation in the British Embassy, asking for assistance in restoring his rightful ownership to the various family properties in Nagasaki: Yesterday I had a long conversation with Mr. Hamano, chief of the Foreign Affairs Section, Nagasaki. He advised me that he had just returned from interviewing the Finance Department in Tokyo and that they, with I presume the acquiescence of C.P.C. [GHQ Civilian Property Custodian], had decided no further funds were
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to be spent on the Ringer properties … May I express my surprise that such a decision was come to, without a previous inspection by C.P.C. or your goodselves, and would ask for such an inspection to protect my rightful demands. It is my intention to live on the property known as No. H Minamiyamate my former private residence but can hardly do so with five families living in my pantry.This is no exaggeration.There are also one family in my kitchen and three more families in the servants’ quarters and the children have already damaged the paintwork and broken the typhoon shutters … It is now more than three months since application for return of properties and shares was made to the Government and the cost of living is so high here that if I cannot get some kind of assurance that the necessary papers will be forthcoming in the next two months I will return to England and come back around the time the Peace Treaty may be signed, i.e. December.HI Ringer was able to retrieve his various properties in Nagasaki and Shimonoseki and to take up residence once again at No. H Minamiyamate, the house where his father and mother had lived since GNNI. He decided at some point, however, to withdraw from the family company. In November GOKG, the Hong Kong and Eastern Shipping Co., Ltd. and Dodwell & Co. of Tokyo, with the cooperation of former Japanese employees, bought out the Ringer family shares in the firm and reopened the Holme Ringer & Co. office in Moji (present-day Moji-ku, Kitakyu#shu# City, Fukuoka Prefecture) in January the following year. Sydney probably took consolation from the fact that at least the name of the company founded by his father in GNLN would remain for posterity.HJ Over the next few years, Sydney and Aileen made it a habit to spend the winter in Nagasaki and the rest of the year with their son Michael, who had returned to England and bought a dairy farm in North Yorkshire. During the stays in Nagasaki, Sydney sold off the Ringer family property lot by lot, often at prices far below market value. Finally he sold the house at No. H Minamiyamate to Nagasaki City in GOLK and retired permanently to England, where he passed away two years later at the age of seventy-six. After the departure of the Ringer family, Robert and Mabel Walker settled into a life of quiet retirement with their sons Albert and Denis, continuing to inhabit their old Western-style house at No. HNB Minamiyamate and to cut an unusual figure in Nagasaki with their Japanese citizenship and English names. By now Robert had abandoned any hope to revive R.N.Walker &
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Co. He associated with only a few close friends and spent many hours sitting alone on the veranda of his house sipping at a glass of whisky and gazing over Nagasaki Harbour, his thoughts dwelling, like ships calling briefly at distant ports, on all the events of the previous decades and the faces of all the people – relatives, friends and business associates – who had passed through Nagasaki while he remained like a lighthouse riveted to an exposed stand of rocks. His death on HH August GOKN was not even mentioned in the Nagasaki newspapers.HK Many foreigners returned toYokohama and Kobe after the war and re-established various social institutions, and the two cities resumed their former role as ports for the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas respectively. The former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement, however, remained unclaimed and uninhabited by its former foreign residents, even though it had been spared the air raids that devastated other cities.The designers of Nagasaki’s political and economic future meanwhile decided to promote the shipbuilding and fishing industries and to let trade and international communications fade into the realm of memory. Most of the old buildings in the O¯ ura, Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate neighbourhoods were occupied in the postwar period by Japanese people who had no interest in the history of the former foreign settlement, let alone ambitions to preserve its architectural heritage. In effect, a district with a distinctive history and culture was deserted and re-inhabited by people who for the most part did not share the lifestyle that had been the basis upon which the district had originally developed.The fact that many of the Japanese people living in the Western-style houses plugged fireplaces to keep out the draught and covered wooden floors with tatami mats shows how unsuited the buildings were to the lifestyle of their new occupants. Ironically, however, the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and particularly the Glover House began to attract legions of tourists to Nagasaki and to boost the economic recovery of the city. Unable to hold back the tide of tourist interest, the Mitsubishi Co. finally relented and donated the Glover House to Nagasaki City in GOKM, the centennial of the founding of the Nagasaki Shipyard in GNKM. By GOLJ, the Glover House had become one of the most important contributors to the city economy, second only to municipal bicycle races.HL This was to prove a turning point not only for the atmosphere and
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appearance of the former foreign settlement but also for the economic fortunes of Nagasaki as a whole. In December GOLN, while conducting research for a book on the history of Holme Ringer & Co., Harold S.Williams received a letter from Arnold Graham, at the time a civil servant in Hong Kong. Williams had contacted Graham earlier to ask for information about Nagasaki in its prewar heyday. Employed formerly in the Shanghai International Municipal Council, Graham had been a close friend of the Ringer brothers and Holme Ringer & Co. employee W.E. Harston. In his letter, now preserved in the Harold S.Williams collection at the National Library of Australia, Arnold talks about the nostalgia he experienced during a visit to Nagasaki after the Second World War: I had a look at the Ringer house when I was in Nagasaki [after the war]. Hadn’t been near it since Freddie [F.E.E.Ringer] poured gin liberally down our salty throats at the end of our sailing trip to Nagasaki in GOIG. For an hour or two I wandered around the haunts of the old foreign community in Nagasaki – above and below Minamiyamate – and my sensitivity to atmosphere responded readily. Largely unaffected by the hand of time, there were all the old monuments. Huge retaining walls, steep ramps, glimpses of dignified residences cloaked with trees and unmodernized, quiet and relatively trafficless roads, peopled by unidentifiable ghosts – amongst them my old friend William Edward Harston. I wouldn’t mind spending my declining years in such a setting.HM The letter arrived at a time however when the Japanese owners of the old Western-style houses in Minamiyamate and Higashiyamate were becoming wealthy enough to replace the antiquated buildings with modern structures. In April GOLL, the owner of the house at No. HK Minamiyamate – the former home of British engineer and Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard employee John Calder – sold the building to Meiji Village, a tourist attraction in Aichi Prefecture where Meiji-period buildings were being relocated and preserved.The local newspaper Nagasaki Shimbun called attention to the fact and even criticized the Nagasaki population for its apathy regarding the loss of this heritage building, but the plan went ahead and the house was dismantled and removed to MeijiVillage, where it remains to this day.
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The absence of former foreign residents, combined with the discomfort experienced by Japanese occupants of Western-style buildings and the indifference of local historians and lawmakers, created fertile conditions for the neglect and, ultimately, destruction of the buildings of the former foreign settlement. Although left mostly unscathed by the atomic bombing, the architecture of the O¯ ura, Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate neighbourhoods began to disappear in the GOLFs when the Japanese economy soared and the nation went on a scrap-and- build spree, trading the old and dusty for the new and shiny. Like the old wooden buildings in many Japanese neighbourhoods, the historic Western-style buildings of the former foreign settlement were pulled down without remorse and replaced with structures that shared no architectural or functional connection with their precursors.A survey conducted in GOLK showed that only GIN of the approximately NFF Western-style buildings of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement remained.HN While passively acknowledging the loss of heritage buildings throughout the city, the Nagasaki municipal government hatched a plan to create a theme park on the Minamiyamate hillside that would showcase the former Glover, Ringer and Alt houses, serve as a receptacle for the relocation of a few other Meiji-period buildings from other parts of the city, and pour cash into the city coffers as the tide of tourist interest rose year by year. The inspiration for this theme park, dubbed ‘Glover Garden’, came from none other than Meiji Village, the tourist attraction in Aichi Prefecture opened in GOLK to preserve quaint but useless relics of yesteryear such as the old Imperial Hotel of Tokyo and the former Calder House mentioned above. The buildings in both Meiji Village and Glover Garden were caught in the crossfire between historic preservation and urban development, but the crucial difference between the two facilities is that the latter is located on the actual site of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement while the former is simply a museum of relocated buildings. Glover Garden opened in GOMJ and over the following years proved a great success, attracting as many as two million visitors a year and making a significant contribution to the local economy. Little effort was directed, however, towards research into the history of the foreign settlement or even the life and work of the former inhabitants of the showcased buildings. Nagasaki officials continued to trot out the Madame Butterfly theme in pamphlets and
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presentations and added further embellishments by erecting monuments to Giacomo Puccini and Japanese prima donna Miura Tamaki, by inviting the winners of a Madame Butterfly singing contest to Nagasaki to plant commemorative trees, and by concealing several heart-shaped stones in the stone pavement near the former Glover House and challenging tourists to find them. While Glover Garden attracted national attention and gained such economic clout that its admission statistics served as an index for the entire local tourism industry, the destruction of buildings, removal of old flagstone paths and stairs, and felling of trees continued unchecked in other parts of the former foreign settlement. Ironically, the commercial success of a tourist attraction resulted in the degradation of the original object of attraction, namely,the eclectic European-Japanese atmosphere left in the wake of a unique interlude in Nagasaki history. One of the buildings that disappeared was the former Cliff House Hotel at No. GF Minamiyamate which had been sold by Charlotte Walker in GOHG, converted into a hospital and rooming house, used as a metal parts factory,and then allowed to fall into a dilapidated state until burning to the ground in a GOMI fire. Nagasaki woodblock artist Tagawa Ken, who produced a large number of prints depicting scenes of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement in its years of decline, was among the last inhabitants of the rooming house in the former Cliff House Hotel prior to the Second WorldWar. In a postwar article,Tagawa remembers the old building and describes the atmosphere of the former foreign settlement: There was a spacious courtyard separating the buildings, each of which had six rooms on two storeys. I rented two rooms on the east side with old fashioned furniture. I was alone on the second storey.A sculptor who made moulds for bronze statues lived below me. A wide corridor connected the buildings, and the window of my room commanded a panoramic view of the Higashiyamate hillside. On the west side, the harbour was visible through the branches of a large camphor tree.Twice a week, one of the NYK steamers plying the Nagasaki-Shanghai route glided into the harbour with music playing across its decks … I have tried to portray the old Western-style buildings in my pictures, but in fact the beauty of that period of history cannot be captured. It came to an end with the eruption of war between Japan and China, and now the buildings of the former foreign settlement have been left to disintegrate.HO
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Gone but not Forgotten
THEFOREIGNCEMETERIES of Nagasaki span a period of more than four centuries. The oldest is the Chinese Cemetery at Goshinji Temple in Inasa opened at the beginning of the seventeenth century when Chinese ships were pushing their Portuguese rivals out of the centre-ring of trade in this port. Hundreds of bed-shaped gravestones remain here today, the inscriptions showing Chinese names and places of origin that are fading with each passing year.When the Dutch East India Co. moved its trading post to Dejima in >CA>, the Dutch also applied for space to bury their dead, but the Tokugawa shogunate, still trying to eradicate reminders of the Portuguese sojourn, declined on the grounds that the gravestones might become objects of worship and spark a Christian revival. The oldest existing gravestone here – indeed the oldest European gravestone in Japan – belongs to Hendrik Duurkoop, a Dutch East India Co. employee who died on the way to Nagasaki in >DDE to take up the position of chief factor at Dejima.> The oldest British gravestone in Japan is located nearby, a simple rectangular stone lying flat on the ground amid the Dutch gravestones under a huge camphor tree. The barely legible
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inscription identifies it as the burial place of a sailor named Thomas Smith who died in Nagasaki while visiting this port on the British man-of-war HMS Tribune.The date of death is shown as >= January >EBF, a period that coincides with Japan’s hurried preparations for the opening of the country six months later.Two more British sailors died in Nagasaki that year and were buried in the Dutch Cemetery. The next addition to the patchwork was the Russian Naval Cemetery established in >EBE on a plot of land a step up the hillside from the Dutch Cemetery.The catalyst was the death of a number of sailors on the steam frigate Askold during an outbreak of cholera. This cemetery served the Russian Navy and the Russian community of Nagasaki over the following decades and today contains more than ?B= gravestones, as well as a chapel of the Russian Orthodox Church with an onion-shaped roof and a monument to victims of the Russo-Japanese War inscribed with the names of another >F@ soldiers and sailors.A newer-looking monument commemorates the >FF> visit of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev during the former’s last trip abroad as USSR head of state. The opening of Japan’s doors in >EBF resulted in a demand for foreign burial space far exceeding that available at the Dutch Cemetery.The Nagasaki authorities provided a plot of land about the size of a tennis court squeezed between two sections of the Chinese Cemetery at Goshinji, but this quickly proved inadequate, not only because of its limited size but also because of its inconvenient location on the side of Nagasaki Harbour opposite the foreign settlement.All of the nine Britons buried in this small cemetery are sailors who met their end suddenly, including John Denby who drowned in Nagasaki Harbour in >EC= and Charles Collins who, as mentioned earlier in this work, was murdered by a sword-wielding samurai while passed out drunk on a Nagasaki doorstep the following year. In >EC>, the same year that Albert Hansard published The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser and the foreign community began the construction of buildings in the O¯ ura neighbourhood, British Consul George Morrison applied to the Japanese authorities for a new cemetery within coffin-carrying distance of the foreign settlement.The authorities responded by providing a spacious plot of land on the upper reaches of O¯ ura Creek, just outside the settlement boundary. Ledges were cut from the
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hillside and an iron fence and gate installed around the circumference.The British consul was the driving force behind the new cemetery, and the committee elected to manage it was comprised entirely of British residents. Moreover, >@@ of the ?=E graves belong to Britons, a proportion that correlates with the distribution of nationalities in Nagasaki throughout the foreign settlement period.The oldest legible gravestone is that of James H.Whitshed, the commander of the gun vessel HMS Leven who died in Shimonoseki on ?> June >EC>.The roster of other Britons buried here is a colourful collage of sailors on warships and merchantmen, engineers and clerks employed by the Takashima Coal Mine, Imperial Telegraph Office and Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co., physicians in Japanese and British government service, and a large number of women and children. One of the gravestones is shared by the two HMS Icarus sailors, Robert Foad and John Hutchings, who came ashore in August >ECD to enjoy a jaunt into the Maruyama entertainment district, only to end up dead on a dark street and contribute unwittingly to the revolution in Japanese politics the following year.Another large gravestone belongs to British medical missionary James Henderson, the author of Shanghai Hygiene or Hints for the Preservation of Health in China (>EC@) who delivered dire warnings about the debilitating effects of the humid Oriental climate aggravated by over-indulgence in food and drink but succumbed himself during a trip to Nagasaki in >ECB at the young age of thirty-five. Despite its large dimensions, this cemetery reached capacity in the mid->EE=s when ship traffic was on the rise in Nagasaki Harbour and the population of the foreign settlement was showing a commensurate increase.Again the Nagasaki British consul led a petition to the governor of Nagasaki for the opening of a new foreign cemetery where, according to custom, the dead could be buried rather than cremated in the Japanese fashion. This resulted in the establishment of the last and largest of Nagasaki’s foreign graveyards, the facility known today as ‘Sakamoto International Cemetery’. Located in the northern suburb ofYamazato (present-day Sakamoto-machi) and studded with some AA= gravestones, this cemetery is comprised of the old section opened in >EEE and a new section added in >F=@ at the peak of Nagasaki’s activity as an international trade port. Since the legal distinction between foreign and Japanese burials
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was abolished decades ago, this cemetery is no longer open except for use by the descendants of people already interred.As a result it nestles like a museum of history in the shade of cedar and camphor trees, the only visitors being a few travellers and interested citizens straying from the city’s usual sightseeing routes. While the city surrounding it has evolved and modernized, the cemetery remains mostly intact, the gravestone inscriptions conveying messages in Chinese, Russian, English, German, French,Arabic, Hebrew and other languages and vividly revealing the diverse foreign presence in Nagasaki around the turn of the twentieth century.Teachers, physicians and missionaries share space with merchants, engineers, sailors, coal stokers, hotelkeepers and bartenders. Interspersed among them are women who accompanied their husbands to Nagasaki or came alone, as well as children like Jean Neeson, the two-year-old daughter of a British couple from Shanghai who visited Nagasaki to enjoy a vacation at Unzen only to suffer the devastating loss of their child.The small gravestone erected in the summer of >F=C is now dislodged by the creeping roots of a nearby tree and covered in lichens, but the inscription is legible:‘Father, Mother, God loving me, guard me while I sleep, and guide my little feet up to Thee’. The number of Britons resident in modern-day Nagasaki is no greater than that in any other regional Japanese city, and none of these people has any links with the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Similarly, the buildings that once accommodated British activity in this port – such as the former British Consulate, offices and banks, and colonial-style houses dotting the green hillsides – are either long gone or relegated to the lifeless status of tourist attraction. Perhaps nowhere else in Nagasaki is the former British presence more poignantly expressed than in the messages inscribed on gravestones in the foreign cemeteries. Many of the Britons buried in Sakamoto International Cemetery made remarkable contributions to the development of industry, education and business in Japan as it emerged as a world power. Scottish merchant-adventurer Thomas Glover alerted Japan to the amenities of the Industrial Revolution and hob- nobbed with the movers and shakers of the new Japan from the time they were poor but bright-eyed young samurai wearing swords until they became honoured statesmen travelling to the citadels of power in black sedans. His British-Japanese son Kuraba Tomisaburo# was a pillar of the prewar Nagasaki economy but
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lived in the fading shadow of British-Japanese friendship and ended his own life in the wake of the Second World War as though putting a seal on the end of international exchange in the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. Eliza Goodall settled in Nagasaki when it was still a roughcast outpost and contributed not only to the establishment of the first Anglican church and seminary here but also to the development of women’s education, an issue that had been largely neglected in feudal society.Wilson Walker and other captains, officers and engineers manned the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. and NipponYu#sen Kaisha (NYK) ships that blazed the early ocean routes connecting Japan with the rest of the world and trained a whole generation of Japanese experts in their respective fields. University of Edinburgh graduate John M. Stoddart arrived in Nagasaki in >EDE and, as chief mining engineer at the Takashima Coal Mine, introduced new technologies to the mining industry in Japan and assisted in the development of other coal mines in western Japan. John Calder, John Hill, George Mansbridge, and William Devine served in different capacities at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, helping to build the foundation for Japan’s modern shipbuilding industry and to make Nagasaki one of the foremost shipbuilding centres in the world. Charles Arnold, a graduate in medicine from the University of Aberdeen, introduced surgical techniques and won recognition as one of the benefactors of Nagasaki University School of Medicine, Japan’s oldest Western-style medical school. On the morning of F August >FAB, the only foreign visitor to Nagasaki was an American B-?F carrying a bulbous atomic bomb nicknamed ‘Fat Man’ in vulgar tribute to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.The plane had flown to the city of Kokura in northern Kyushu, only to abandon the mission because of cloud cover and to veer southwest to Nagasaki, the reserve target.With only enough fuel for one run over the city,the plane flew past the intended dropping point in the centre of the city and continued northward into the UrakamiValley where a row of Mitsubishi arms factories finally appeared through a crack in the clouds. When the bombardier pushed the button to release the bomb, the plane leapt skyward, suddenly free of its heavy load, and turned south towards the base on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Instead of a pinpoint detonation over the centre of a hated enemy city, therefore, the atomic bomb exploded over the heads of the largest Catholic community in Japan, instantly demolishing Urakami
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Cathedral and killing about E,=== of its >?,=== parishioners.The irony was amplified by the fact that the bomb exploded in the sky less than one kilometre north of Sakamoto International Cemetery, snapping the crosses off the foreign gravestones, tearing trees up by the roots, and snuffing out so many human lives in the neighbourhood that no exact count has ever been made. In the aftermath, nothing remained of the rich greenery that had blanketed the northern part of the city only hours before, let alone any trace of the cherry trees that had once scattered pink blossoms over the cemetery. Nagasaki fell into a morbid hush, pushed to the edge of almost complete despair. But survivors began to pick up the pieces of their broken lives and to restore homes and streets in Urakami Valley.Weeds appeared in the rain-washed soil the following spring, refuting rumours that nothing would grow in the atomic wasteland for seventy years, and little by little the noise of industry returned to the stricken city.And just around the same time that the creak of the British-made hammerhead crane at Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard began to echo once again on Nagasaki hillsides, someone retrieved the broken crosses and headstones at Sakamoto International Cemetery and glued them back in place.
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Appendix
British Consuls and Acting Consuls in Nagasaki, 1859–1941
C. Pemberton Hodgson .526 George S. Morrison .526–.530 Francis G. Myburgh .53.–.531 Charles A.Winchester .53/ Abel A.J. Gower .531–.533 Marcus O. Flowers .534–.544 Adolphus A.Annesley .54-–.54. James Troup .545–.55/ John C. Hall .55/–.551 William G.Aston .551 J.J. Enslie .552–.556 John J. Quin .556–.563 Joseph H. Longford .564–.6-. Ralph G.E. Forster .6-/ R. De B. Layard .6-/–.6-0 E.Hamilton Holmes .6-0–.6-1 Frank W.W.Playfair .6-2–.6-6 Harold G. Parlett .6-2 Arthur M. Chalmers .6.-–.6./
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G.H. Phipps .6./ Ralph G.E. Forster .6.0 John B. Rentiers .6.1–.6.2 John T.Wawn .6.3–.6.5 Thomas G. Harrington .6.6 Oswald White .6/-–.6/2 M. Paske-Smith .6/3–.6/5 Henry H.Thomas .603 Ferdinand C. Greatrex .6/6–.61.
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Notes
Chapter G. C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan FJIN–FKJE (Berkley: University of California Press, GOKG), pp. OG–GIL. H. The group was crucified at Nishizaka near present-day JR Nagasaki Station on February K, GKOM and canonized as the ‘Twenty-six Saints of Japan’ by Pope Pius IX in GNLH. I. Nagasaki shishi nenpyo (Nagasaki City Chronology) (Nagasaki City ed., GONG), p. GM. ̄ J. A small port in the northern part of present-day Nagasaki Prefecture, Hirado was the seat of the Matsura Clan and the site of a trading post run by the Portuguese before their transfer to Nagasaki. K. For a biography of William Adams see,William Corr, Adams the Pilot: The Life and Times of Captain William Adams, FJKI–FKGE (Richmond: Curzon Press, GOOK). L. Although essentially a peasant revolt instigated by heavy taxation, the rebellion was viewed by nervous officials in Edo as a Christian- inspired insurrection because the area was populated heavily by former Japanese Christians. M. Charles Peter Thunberg, Travels in Europe,Africa and Asia between the Years FLLE and FLLN (London, GMOL),Vol.I, pp. LI–J. N. Marius B. Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, GOOH), pp. HO–IF. O. W.G.Aston,‘H.M.S. Phaeton at Nagasaki’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan,Vol.M, (GNMO), pp. IHI–IL.
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GF. Koga Ju jiroNagasaki, yogakushi (The History of Western Studies in Nagasaki),̄ (Nagasaki:̄ Nagasakī Bunkensha, GOLL),Vol.G, pp. GHG–IO. GG. The Edinburgh Evening Courant, GM October GNGJ. GH. William G. Beasley, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan FMHI–FMJM (London:The Japan Library,GOOK), pp. IG–KJ. GI. Cruise of the U.S. Sloop-of-War Preble, Commander James Glynn, to Napa and Nagasaki, U.S. Senate Documents: IHnd Congress, Gst Session (GNKG–H),Vol.O, Executive Documents, No KO, Series LHF. GJ. Ranald Macdonald’s autobiography was published posthumously in GOHI. See Ranald Macdonald:The Narrative of His Life, FMGI–FMNI (annotated and edited by William S. Lewis and Naojiro Murakami) (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, GOOF). GK. William McOmie, ‘The Frigate Askold and the Opening of the Russian Settlement at Nagasaki’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. J, Summer GOOL, pp. G–IH.The Russians finally gave up and sailed to Shimoda, where, in October GNKJ, they won an agreement similar to the Treaty of Kanagawa. GL. Herman J. Moeshart,‘The First Dutch Treaty with Japan’, Crossroads: A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. K, Summer GOOM, pp. G–HG. GM. H.J. Jones,‘Bakumatsu Foreign Employees’, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol.HO, No. I (Autumn, GOMJ), pp. IFK–HM. GN. National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew (FO NNG/KJG). GO. The Illustrated London News, GI January GNKK, pp. JK–L. HF. Nagasaki University Faculty of Medicine, ed., Nagasaki igaku hyakunenshi (Hundred-year History of Medicine in Nagasaki) (Nagasaki, GOLG), pp. JF–NO. Pompe van Meerdervoort published the following memoir after his return to The Netherlands: J.L.C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, Vijf Jaren in Japan (FiveYears in Japan) (Leiden: Van den Heuvell & Van Santen, GNLM), two volumes. English translation entitled Doctor on Desima (FMJL-FMKH). Translated and annotated by Elizabeth Witterman and John Bowers. Tokyo: Voyager’s Press, GOMF. HG. For details see, Kusumoto Juichi, Nagasaki Seitetsusho (The Nagasaki Iron Works) (Tokyo: Chuoko ronsha, GOOH). HH. Nagasaki City Chronology,p.̄ OK. HI. Michael R.Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism:The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of Japanese Diplomacy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, HFFJ), pp. GO–HH. HJ. For the full text, see William G. Beasley, Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy FMJH–FMKM (London: Oxford University Press, GOKK), pp. GNI–O.
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Chapter G. Rutherford Alcock to George Morrison, GK June GNKO (FO HLH/M). H. C. Pemberton Hodgson to Rutherford Alcock, H July GNKO (FO HLH/L). I. Lane Earns, Nagasaki kyoryu#chi no seiyo#jin (Westerners of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha Co., HFFH), pp. GNG–H. J. C. Pemberton Hodgson, A Residence at Nagasaki and Hakodate in FMJN–FMKE (London: Richard Bentley,GNLG), p. HL. K. Ibid., pp. IH–I. L. Ibid., p. IF. M. ‘Land Regulations for the Port of Nagasaki in Japan’ (FO HLH/GMI/GKI). N. John Major was one of three residents elected to represent the foreign settlement’s Municipal Council, but he died of a sudden illness on O February GNLH at the age of twenty-seven. He was buried in O¯ ura International Cemetery, where his gravestone remains to this day. O. Iwasaki Yataro# and Iwasaki Yanosuke Biography Editorial Committee ed., Iwasaki yataro# den (Biography of Iwasaki Yataro#), (Tokyo, GOLM),Vol. G, p. HJJ.Translated from Japanese by the author. Iwasaki’s diaries and reports to his superiors comprise a large portion of this biography.Despite the valuable experience gained in Nagasaki, Iwasaki submitted his resignation in April the following year. He returned in GNLM, this time to serve as an employee (later chief) of Tosa Sho#kai, a trade firm opened here by the clan. Iwasaki founded the Mitsubishi Company in GNMI and served as its first president until his death in GNNK.The company began as a shipping enterprise but quickly expanded into a business and industrial empire. GF. Nagasaki City Chronology, p. OM. This neighbourhood is called Kozone-machi (Kozone Quarter) to this day, and descendants of Rokuzaemon continue to live nearby. GG. Robert Fortune, Yedo and Peking:A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitals of Japan and China (London: John Murray,GNLI), pp. H–K. GH. Ibid., pp. K–L. GI. Ibid., p. GO. GJ. George Morrison to Rutherford Alcock, GI October GNLF (FO HLH/GO). GK. Terry Bennett, Photography in Japan FMJH–FNFG (Tokyo, Rutland, Singapore:Tuttle Publishing, HFFL), pp. JG–KG. GL. FO HLH/GO/JO–KJ. GM. Robert Fortune, Yedo and Peking:A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitals of Japan and China, p. N. Still existent today, the rock mentioned by Fortune is a monument to the former Dejima
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physicians Engelbert Kaempfer and Carl P.Thunberg (both of whom published pioneering works on Japan after their return to Europe) erected by P.F. von Siebold during his sojourn at the Dejima Factory from GNHI to GNHO. GN. FO MOL/GO/GGG. GO. Wicks changed the name of her establishment to the ‘Royal Hotel’ in GNLL and continued to run it until her premature death in GNLO. Her son Alexander died the following year and was buried alongside his mother in the international cemetery at Inasa. For details see Lane Earns, Nagasaki kyoryu#chi no seiyo#jin (Westerners of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement), pp. GKG–H. HF. ‘Terms of Proposed Lease of Green’s Hotel’ (FO HLH/LF/ NI–J). HG. George Morrison to Rutherford Alcock, HO May GNLG (FO HLH/HO). HH. The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, HJ July GNLG. HI. FO HLH/HO/HHJ–HHL. HJ. Phillis Alt,‘An Extract from the Memoirs of Elisabeth Christina Alt, Nee Earl,Who Lived in Nagasaki from GNLJ–LN,Together with an Abridged Biographical Sketch of Her Parents’. October GONK.This excerpt from Elisabeth’s memoirs (written about GOGF) was presented to Nagasaki City in GONK by Alt’s great-granddaughter Viscountess Tessa Montgomery of Alamein. HK. From the unpublished memoir of Henry J. Hunt, who succeeded William Alt in Nagasaki and took up residence in the former Alt residence at No. GJ Minamiyamate. I thank Sam Hunt for this information. HL. Nagasaki’s foremost tourist attraction, Glover Garden was opened in GOMJ on the Minamiyamate hillside to showcase the former Glover, Alt, and Ringer residences and to serve as a receptacle for the relocation of several other Western-style buildings threatened with destruction during Japan’s postwar economic boom. HM. Brian Burke-Gaffney,‘Minamiyamate GJ bankan saiko#’ (Rethinking No. GJ Minamiyamate)’, Chiiki Ronso#,Vol. HJ, March HFFO, pp. MG–NG. HN. Kitano Norio, Amakusa kaigai hattenshi (History of the Involvement of Amakusa in Overseas Development) (Fukuoka: Ashi Shobo#, GONK),Vol.G, pp. GKI–HIM. HO. The records of the Nagasaki British Consulate include a copy of the contract concluded between Koyama and the leaders of the church committee and also a floor plan and illustration of the proposed building (FO MOL/GML/HGK–N). IF. Charles Winchester to Edward St. John Neale, HM October GNLH (FO HLH/IG). IG. C.M.Williams returned to the United States in GNLL and later assumed the post of bishop of China and Japan. After his departure, the Anglican Church Mission Society (CMS) took over the English
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Church in Higashiyamate. In GNMK, CMS missionary Herbert Maundrell started theology classes for Japanese students and two years later established an Anglican seminary in a new building at No.GF Dejima.The seminary soon closed, but the building remained in use as a CMS dormitory and is now a nationally designated ‘Important Cultural Asset’ and part of the Dejima Dutch Factory tourist facility. IH. George Smith (Bishop of Victoria, Hong Kong), TenWeeks in Japan (London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, GNLG), pp. MI–M. Smith was the guest of C.M.Williams during his Nagasaki visit. II. Lane Earns,‘A Miner in the Deep and Dark Places: Guido Verbeck in Nagasaki, GNKO–GNLO’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. K (GOOM), pp. NM–GGH. IJ. The Nagasaki Christians had been isolated from the Catholic Church for two centuries, but the memory of single, celibate European priests seems to have persisted in their collective consciousness. They may have assumed that the Protestant missionaries, who were accompanied by wives and children, were representatives of some other unrelated religion. IK. The Japan Herald (Yokohama), HH November GNLH. I thank Lane Earns for this information. Leon Dury is also attributed with introducing food-canning techniques to Japan (Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GFM). IL. Francisque Marnas, La ‘Réligion de Jésus’ (Iaso Ja-kyo#) ressuscitée au Japon dans la seconde moitié du XIX siècle, (Paris: Delhomme et Briguet Editeurs, ca GNOL),Vol.G, p. JNM–OF. English translation from M. Paske-Smith, Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days, FKEH–FMKM (Kobe: J.L.Thompson and Co., GOHM), pp. HNL–M. IM. Hiramatsu Giemon, Do#chu# nikki (Diary from a Journey), unpublished document preserved today at Kyu#shu# University. I thank Honma Sadao for this information. IN. The North China Herald, GG May GNLG. IO. Ibid., N March GNLH. JF. ‘Statement of Mr Glover, GH July GNLI’ (FO HLH/LF/GJJ). Morrison, along with several other British officials, had been attacked by samurai at the British Legation at To zenji in Edo in July GNLG. He returned to Nagasaki in April GNLI after̄ recuperating in England. The assassination plot revealed by Glover may have inspired his decision to leave Japan permanently later the same year. He died in England in GNOI at the age of sixty-two. JG. The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, HN August and GG September GNLG. JH. FO HLH/LF/HN–O. JI. Jardine Matheson Archive, University Library, Cambridge. I thank Alexander McKay for this information.
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JJ. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. OO. JK. Ernest Satow, A Diplomat in Japan (London: Seeley, Service & Co., GOHG), p. GIF. JL. Ibid. JM. Alexander McKay, Scottish Samurai:Thomas Blake Glover FMHM–FNFF (Edinburgh: Canongate Press, GOOM), pp. NN–OL. JN. The Nagasaki Press, HH December GOGG.The koku is a unit of volume equivalent to about five bushels, said traditionally to be the amount of rice one person eats in one year.The rank and power of a feudal domain was determined by its annual rice production. Most of the clans in southwestern Japan produced less than GFF,FFF koku. JO. For details see, Sugiyama Shinya, ‘Thomas Glover: A British Merchant in Japan, GNLG–GNMF’, Business History,Vol. HL, No. H (GONJ). KF. Kwang-Ching Liu, Anglo-American Steamship Rivalry in China: FMKG– FMLI (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, GOLH), pp. MF–I. KG. Sugiyama Shinya, Meiji ishin to igirisu sho#nin: tomasu guraba no sho#gai (The Meiji Restoration and a British Merchant:The Life of̄ Thomas Glover), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, GOOI), p. NK. KH. The Nagasaki Press, M June GOGN.The word ‘Bund’ refers to the street stretching along the waterfront in O¯ ura and Sagarimatsu. KI. Ibid., GG June GOGN. KJ. ‘Memorandum of Interview between HBM Consul and the Governor of Nagasaki on L February GNLN’ (FO HLH/GKH/ HG–H). KK. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GFJ. KL. In December GNLN and January GNLO, Nagasaki British Consul Marcus Flowers sent letters to Sir Harry Parkes in Tokyo informing him of the arrest of the Chikuzen samurai involved in the murders and the proceedings of the subsequent trial (FO HLH/GKH/HML–NK and HLH/GMI/O–HO).These documents provide a reliable account of the incident and its aftermath. KM. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GFG and GFL. KN. Chin To ka, ‘Nagasaki kyoryu#chi no chu#gokujin shakai’ (The Chinese Communitȳ in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement), Nagasaki kyoryu#chi gaikokujin meibo III (List of Foreign Residents of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement,Vol.I), (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Prefectural Library,HFFJ), pp. JOH–KGF. KO. Kamio Genji, ‘Nagasaki kakyo#soshiki no kisotekiko#satsu’ (Basic Observations on the Organization of Overseas Chinese in Nagasaki), Nagasaki kyoryu#chi gaikokujin meibo III (List of Foreign Residents of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement,Vol.I), p. JLK. LF. The Nagasaki Express, GM February GNMH. LG. FO HLH/GMI/GHN. LH. The Nagasaki Express, GO March GNMF. LI. Ibid., HF September GNMI.To this day, the Chinese Bon Festival, or
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‘Festival of the Dead’, is celebrated in Nagasaki on and around GK August according to the lunar calendar. Chinese residents symbolically welcome the souls of the dead to their earthly homes and appease the ‘devils’ (i.e. lost souls) with meals laid out on tables, the hanging out of red lanterns, and the burning of paper objects. LJ. Sugiyama Shinya, Meiji ishin to igirisu sho#nin: tomasu guraba no sho#gai (The Meiji Restoration and a British Merchant:The Life of̄ Thomas Glover), p. GKF. LK. Ibid., pp. GII–K. LL. Alexander McKay, Scottish Samurai:Thomas Blake Glover FMHM–FNFF (Edinburgh: Canongate Press, GOOM), pp. GFH–GFK. LM. The Nagasaki Times, HI January GNLN. No copies of this newspaper seem to remain.The article was quoted in the IG March GNLO issue of The Aberdeen Journal. I thank Alexander McKay for this information. LN. The dock was designated an ‘Important Historic Site’ by the Japanese government in GOLO.Today it is no longer in use, but the engine house remains as the oldest brick building in Japan, the original engine house, boilers and rails are intact, and cherry trees shade the former ways as if to symbolize the meeting here of East and West a century and a half ago. LO. FO MOL/GM/HO. MF. Sugiyama Shinya, Meiji ishin to igirisu sho#nin: tomasu guraba no sho#gai (The Meiji Restoration and a British Merchant:The Life of̄ Thomas Glover), p. GLF–G. MG. The Nagasaki Express, HM August GNMF. MH. Koga Ju#jiro, Maruyama yu#jo to to#ko#mo#jin (Maruyama Courtesans and the Chinese and Dutch) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha Co., GOLN), Vol.H, pp. HGL–GM.This information is based on records kept by both the Chikugo-ya brothel where Kikusono worked and the Buddhist temple Tasso#ji where the boy was interred. MI. FO MOL/HIM/H. MJ. For an account of Glover’s relationships with Japanese women, see Naito# Hatsuho, Meiji kenkoku no yo#sho#:Thomas B. Glover shimatsu (Western Merchant and Contributor to Meiji Country-building: Thomas B. Glover Start to Finish) (Tokyo:Atene Shobo#, HFFG), pp. IJO–LM. MK. The Nagasaki Press, GH January GOFI.
Chapter G. The Nagasaki Shipping List, G November GNLO. H. The Nagasaki Express, GH February GNMF. I. Literally meaning ‘trample the picture’, fumie (sometimes efumi) was a ritual forced upon the entire population of Nagasaki and surrounding areas during the Edo Period. In January every year,
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citizens came to a specified location and, in the presence of authorities, demonstrated their rejection of the banned religion by stepping on a bronze plaque bearing a cross or some other Christian image.The ritual was enforced with such rigour that even infants had to comply.If anyone was too ill to make the trip, the authorities came around later and pressed the image against the person’s foot. Elisabeth Alt reports in her memoir that the underground Japanese Christians complied like everyone else but repented later by drinking the water used to wash their feet. J. The Nagasaki Express, HO April GNMG. K. The treaty consuls to Nomura Morihide, H January GNMF (FO HLH/GKH/GH–I). L. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, GK October GNNG. M. The Nagasaki Express, IF November GNMH. N. Ibid., L September GNMI. O. Henry Arthur Tilley, Japan, the Amoor and the Pacific (London: Smith, Elder & Co., GNLG), p. LL. GF. Koga Ju#jiro, Maruyama yu#jo to to#ko#mo#jin (Maruyama Courtesans and the Chinese and Dutch) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, GOLN),Vol. H, pp. HIO–JI. GG. George Smith, TenWeeks in Japan, pp. MJ–K. GH. The Nagasaki Express, GO August GNMG. GI. Ibid.‘Moosmie’ is a corruption of musume, the Japanese word for ‘girl’ or ‘daughter’. Soon after the opening of Japan’s doors it became a byword, in various spellings, for the young women working in the sex trade. GJ. Ibid., HL August GNMG GK. The Nagasaki Express, HI November GNMH. GL. Ibid., IF November GNMH. GM. J.C. Hall to Harry Parkes, HM April GNNI (FO HLH/JFJ). GN. Filomeno Braga sold The Nagasaki Express and its equipment to a rival newspaper called The Rising Sun in May GNMJ, and the two merged to form The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express. This was operated by a small group of Australian Baptist missionaries led by Wilton Hack and Alfred J. Clode. Clode moved toYokohama in GNML to start a new publication called The Japan Photo Nightly Review, and Arthur Norman replaced him as editor. In January the following year, the newspaper was purchased in its entirety by British entrepreneur Charles Sutton. Norman became proprietor and editor when Sutton died in Nagasaki in GNOJ. GO. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, IF June GNNI. HF. Ibid. HG. Ibid., M July GNNI. HH. For examples of the conflicting opinions see Yokota Kisaburo#, Nihon ni okeru chigaiho#ken (Extraterritoriality in Japan), (Tokyo:
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Kokkagakkaironshu#, GOIM) and Richard T. Chang, The Justice of the Western Consular Courts in Nineteenth Century Japan (Westport: Greenwood Press, GONJ). HI. FO HLH/HLH/HHF–HHO. HJ. Copies of all the related correspondence are contained in FO HLH/HMM. HK. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HH September GNNI. HL. Ibid., HM October GNNI. HM. Ibid., GM November GNNI. HN. Ibid., HG August GNNL. HO. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GHH. IF. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HI February GNNM. IG. Ibid., IG August GNNM.
Chapter G. The Nagasaki Express, GH August GNMG. H. James N.Forrest died on his way to the Unzen hot springs on HO July the following year and was buried in the foreign cemetery in Nagasaki. I. The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, HH June GNLG. HH June, the date of the first issue of the newspaper, is now ‘National Bowling Day’ in Japan. J. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HN March GNNK. K. The Nagasaki Shipping List,Vol.G, No. G, G November GNLO. L. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HM April GNNM. M. Ibid., K November GNNG. N. The graves of several former Freemasons can be found in Nagasaki’s international cemeteries. Complete lists of the members of the Nagasaki Masonic Lodge are preserved today in the library at the Freemason’s Hall, Edinburgh. Contrary to popular opinion, the name of Thomas Glover is nowhere to be found in these lists. For a history of the Masonic Lodge in Japan seeYoshio Washizu,‘Anti- Masonry in Japan – Past and Present’, Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (London, GOOK), pp. NK–GGL. I thank Robert McWilliam for this information. O. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, M December GNNM. GF. The Nagasaki Express, N December GNMM.The advertisement ran until GI February the following year, when the wording was changed from ‘For Sale or to Let’ to simply ‘To Let’. It disappeared altogether at the end of March.
Chapter G. Going off to a career at sea had a long tradition in Maryport.The village of Ewanrigg Hall on the outskirts of town was the birthplace of Fletcher Christian of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Another
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Maryport son who went to sea was Thomas Henry Ismay,the future president of the White Star Line famous for its ill-fated flagship Titanic. Ismay was born here in GNIM and, like Wilson Walker, worked for a firm with connections in South America before establishing himself as a ship-owner and broker in Liverpool. H. This anecdote is supported by an entry in the Mercantile Navy List (Guildhall Library, London) for GNLN which states that the Filipino was owned by Peter Denny of Dumbarton, that it sailed from Broomielaw, Scotland for Batavia, Singapore and Manila in January GNLM and that it reached Osaka in April GNLN. I. ‘Transcript of an account relating his ships and experiences after his arrival in Japan in GNLN and his involvement in the founding of The Mitsubishi Company, Japan’ by Wilson Walker.This handwritten document is preserved by Wilson Walker descendants in the UK. I thank Derek Robinson and Iain Morrison for this information. J. Certificate of Competency No. NINHJ (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich). K. Nippon Yu#sen Kaisha (NYK) ed., Nippon yu#sen kaisha nanaju#nenshi, (Seventy-Year History of the NipponYu#sen Kaisha) (Tokyo, GOKL), p. M. L. Iwasaki Yataro# and Iwasaki Yanosuke Biography Editorial Committee ed., Iwasaki yataro# den (Biography of IwasakiYataro#),Vol. H, p. GGI. M. Ibid., pp. OH–GGK. N. The Nagasaki Express, HK April GNMJ. O. Mitsubishi Shashi Kanko#kai (ed.) Mitsubishi shashi (Mitsubishi Company Records) (Tokyo:Tokyo University Press, GONG),Vol. G, p. IIK. GF. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HH July GNML. GG. Ibid., GM February GNMM. GH. The West Cumberland Times, GG August GNMM. I thank Derek Waite for this information. GI. The Japan Daily Herald, GG November GNMN. GJ. From the GNMM and GNMN issues of Lloyd’s List. GK. Japan Gazette (Yokohama), HJ November GNMO. I thank William McOmie for this information. GL. Takashima Town Office (ed.) Takashima cho#sei sanju#nen no ayumi (Thirty-Year History of the Takashima Town Administration) (Nagasaki: GOMN), p. GOM. GM. Maekawa Masao, Tanko#shi: Nagasaki-ken sekitanshi nenpyo# (A History of Coal Mining: Chronology of Major Events in Nagasaki Prefecture) (Fukuoka:Ashi Shobo#, GOOF), pp. LH–K. GN. The Nagasaki Express, GH February GNNG. It is apparent from this article that the participants in Nagasaki were aware of the potential of dynamite for military as well as industrial uses.The author could
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never have imagined the significance that the word ‘atom’ would garner in Nagasaki half a century later. GO. Thomas Glover to James Troup, H March GNNG (FO MOL/NJ). HF. James Troup to G. Kennedy,HG January GNNG (FO HLH/IMH). HG. Boyd & Co. was a Shanghai-based shipbuilding company that established a factory in Nagasaki in GNLM and remained here until GNMM. Among the employees was Scotsman John F. Calder, who helped to establish the company branch in Yokohama and who came back to Nagasaki in GNNJ to serve as the first manager of the Nagasaki Shipyard after it was leased to the Mitsubishi Mail Steamship Co. Calder lived in the Western-style house at No. HK Minamiyamate (presently preserved in Meiji Villiage, Aichi Prefecture). He died in Nagasaki in May GNOH and was buried at Sakamoto International Cemetery. HH. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, O April GNNG. HI. James Troup et al. to Utsumi Tadakatsu, HN May GNNG (FO HLH/IMH). HJ. Mitsubishi Ko#gyo# Semento Kabushikikaisha (ed), Takashima tanko#shi (A History of the Takashima Coal Mine) (Nagasaki, GONO), p. LF. HK. From the obituary in The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, GI January GNOH. HL. Alexander arrived in Nagasaki in GNLI to assist in the business of Glover & Co. He married Ann Findlay at the British Consulate in Nagasaki on G June GNLL and fathered a son, named Ryle after his friend and fellow Glover & Co. employee, Ryle Holme. He returned to Aberdeen the following year and remained for some time with his family, but he sailed once again for Nagasaki and arrived here in GNMF on the corvette Jho Sho Maru (later renamed Ryu#jo#). Alexander helped his brother sort out the affairs of the Takashima Coal Mine but in the interim suffered a failed marriage, leaving his wife and son to find their own way in Aberdeen. HM. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HO July GNNH. HN. George Morrison to Rutherford Alcock, GI October GNLG (FO HLH/GO/KF). HO. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, K July GNNJ.This comment is preceded by a detailed description of the dockyard, factories and other facilities. Mitsubishi purchased the rights to the shipyard in GNNM, cementing its position as leader of the shipbuilding industry in Japan. IF. All of the foreigners recruited by Mitsubishi to work at the shipyard would, except for J.H.Wilson, remain in Nagasaki for life. For a complete list of the foreign employees of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, see Yukiko Fukasaku, Technology and Industrial Development in Pre-War Japan: Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard FMMI–FNHI (London and NewYork:Routledge, GOOH), p. JN. IG. William D.Wray, Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K.: Business Strategy in the
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Japanese Shipping Industry (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, GONJ), pp. GHO–HHK. IH. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, H February GNNM. II. FO MOL/GFM/MI. IJ. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, GK May GNMN. IK. Kusaka Yoshio to J.J, Quin, HN May GNNO (FO HLH/LHI). Japan’s first public telephone exchange was launched the following year between Tokyo and Yokohama, but Nagasaki, the cradle of the technology in this country, had to wait until GNOO to join the national network of telephone communication. IL. Murakami Masayuki, Nagasaki no denshin denwa shi (History of the Telegraph and Telephone in Nagasaki) (private publication: GOMI), pp. GOJ–K. Official permission for the line was granted on GH February GNOF. IM. The North China Daily News, cited in The JapanWeekly Mail, HO April GNOI, p. KGO.
Chapter G. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, N July GNNK.The newspaper carried an announcement of the arrival of the warship this day. H. Pierre Loti, Madame Chrysanthème (Paris: Calmann Lévy, GNNN).The quotations in the present book are taken from the English translation by Laura Ensor. I. Loti deliberately spelled the Japanese word musume (‘girl’ or ‘daughter’) this way because he sensed a little ‘pout’ in the sound and thought this evoked the charms of Japanese girls (the word for pout in French is moue). J. Katherine S. Baxter, In Bamboo Lands (New York: The Merriam Company,GNOK), p. IML. K. Albert Tracy, Rambles Through Japan Without a Guide (London: Sampson, Low,Marston & Company,GNOH), pp. N–O. L. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HF May GNML. M. Ibid., IG January GNMJ. N. Lane R. Earns and Brian Burke-Gaffney, Across the Gulf of Time:The International Cemeteries of Nagasaki (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, GOOG), p.NN. O. FO MOL/HIN. Unfortunately no list of marriages registered at the consulate is available prior to GOHH. GF. Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture (GJ–GKGN–J). GG. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, K August GNOG. GH. The JapanWeekly Mail, K September GNOG. GI. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, N September GNOG. GJ. The names are shown in the passenger lists in the HH October GNOH issue of The JapanWeekly Mail. GK. TheWest CumberlandTimes, HL May GNOJ.
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GL. Naito# Hatsuho, Meiji kenkoku no yo#sho#:Thomas B. Glover shimatsu (Western Merchant and Contributor to Meiji Country-building: Thomas B. Glover Start to Finish), pp. MK–OJ.The beer produced by the Japan Brewery Company was called ‘Kirin Beer’, alluding to the mythical animal that would later become the name of the company itself. GM. The original plans of the Saikyo#-maru and Kobe-maru are preserved today at the Mitchell Library,Glasgow. GN. Charlotte Walker, ‘Fifty-Five Years in the Orient’, The Shanghai Woman, March GOIJ, pp. GN–GO. GO. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GHO. HF. Nagasaki Prefecture ed., Nagasaki kyoryu#chi gaikokujin meibo III (List of Foreign Residents of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement,Vol. I), (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Prefectural Library,HFFJ), pp. GMN and GNN. HG. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GHO. HH. Ibid., p. GIG. HI. Lane Earns, Nagasaki kyoryu#chi no seiyo#jin (Westerners of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement), pp. GOI. Elwood G. Babbitt would later marry Robert N.Walker’s eldest daughter Annie. HJ. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, N April GNOL. HK. Kakkoku jinin narabi kosu# shirabe hyo# (Nagasaki Prefectural Library, GJ–KKO–GH). This handwritten register compiled by Nagasaki authorities lists the residents of the foreign concession at the end of each year from GNML to GOFF.The census results from GNOI to GNOL show Irvin H. Correll, his wife and their two sons and four daughters living at No. GH Higashiyamate. HL. John Luther Long, ‘Madame Butterfly’, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (New York: January GNON),Vol. KK, No. I, pp. IMJ–OH. HM. For a detailed analysis of the historical background of the story, see Brian Burke-Gaffney, Starcrossed:A Biography of Madame Butterfly (Norfolk: EastBridge, HFFJ). HN. Lane Earns,‘Like a Lighthouse on a Stormy Night:The Seamen’s Home of Nagasaki’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. J, Summer GOOL, pp. NK–GFI. HO. Earle Sims as quoted in a GH January GNOK letter from Rev.Albertus Pieters to John Karsten. Cited in Earns,‘Like a Lighthouse on a Stormy Night:The Seamen’s Home of Nagasaki’, p. OG. IF. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, HL June GNOK.
Chapter G. The visit is described in detail in the HN June GNMO issue of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express. H. The Nagasaki Press, H August GOFK. I. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, L May GNOG.
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J. Koga Ju jiro,Maruyama yu#jo to to#ko#mo#jin (Maruyama Courtesans and the Chinesē and Dutch),Vol. H, pp. HNJ–K. For a biography of Michinaga Ei see Brian Burke-Gaffney,‘The Tattoos of Michinaga Ei and Nicholas II’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. G, Summer GOOI, pp. OG–GFK. K. The Spencers of Althorp are famous today as the family of the late Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. John Poyntz Spencer’s younger brother, Charles Robert Spencer (Lth Earl Spencer) was Diana’s great-grandfather. L. Author’s collection. M. Brian Burke-Gaffney, ‘Two Recently Discovered Ernest Satow Letters: Contents and Implications’, Chiikironso# (Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science),Vol.GM, GOOO, pp. LI–MG. N. Nagasaki Chu#goku Ko#ryu#shi Kyo#kai ed., Son bun to nagasaki (Sun Yat-Sen and Nagasaki) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Bunkensha, HFFI), p. IF. O. http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/HKG_B.html GF. G.H. Phipps to Sir Claude MacDonald, GL October GOGH (FO HLH/GGHH) GG. ‘The Case of Mrs Barff, British Resident of Nagasaki’ (FO HLH/GGHH/JN) GH. From the obituary in The Nagasaki Press, L May GOHH. GI. Douglas Slader, The Japs at Home (London: Hutchison & Co., GNOH), p. GIN. GJ. From the unpublished memoir of Rose Mansbridge (GONG). I thank Rose’s daughter Mary Anderson for this information. GK. The buildings were damaged by the atomic bomb explosion in GOJK and fell into a state of disrepair until GOLM, when Chinese residents decided to open the facility to tourists and to use the income for the upkeep of the school and shrine.The school closed in GONN, but the shrine complex remains to this day as a tourist attraction and symbol of the Chinese presence in the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. GL. Lane Earns, ‘The Shanghai/Nagasaki Judaic Connection, GNKO– GOHJ’, The Jews of China: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (New York:M.E. Sharpe, GOOO), pp. GKM–LN. GM. The Jewish Encyclopedia (NewYork:Funk and Wagnalls,GOFG–FL). GN. Quoted in the GO February GOFG issue of The Nagasaki Press from an article by a correspondent of The London and China Express who had passed through the port earlier. GO. ‘Foreign Office: Consulate, Nagasaki, Japan: General Corre- spondence and Consular Court Records’ (FO MOL), etc., National Archives, Kew. HF. Arthur Norman was given into the care of an insane asylum in Hong Kong and died there in November GNOM. HG. For an historical outline, see Harold S.Williams, The Story of Holme
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Ringer & Co. Ltd. In Western Japan FMKM–FNKM (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co., GOLN). HH. Yamaguchi Mitsuomi, Nagasaki no yo#fu# kenchiku (Western-style Architecture in Nagasaki) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki City Board of Education, ed., GOLM), p. MG. HI. Nagasaki City Chronology,pp. GHN and GII. HJ. Dallas Finn,‘Josiah Conder (GNKH–GOJF) and Meiji Architecture’, Britain and Japan FMJN–FNNF: Themes and Personalities (London: Routledge, GOOG), pp. NL–OI. HK. The Nagasaki Press, GL April GNON. HL. Mitsubishi Nagasaki Zo#senjo Shokko#ka (ed.), Mitsubishi nagasaki zo#senjoshi: bakumatsu yori sho#wa sannen made (History of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, from the End of the Edo Period to March GOHN) (Nagasaki, GOHN), p. JFL. HM. The Nagasaki Press, HH July GNOO. HN. Nippon Yusen Kaisha ed., Nanatsu no umi de isseiki (A Century on the Seven Seas) (Tokyo, GONK), pp. HH–I. HO. The original station was located in the Urakami district to the north of Nagasaki proper, the site of modern-day JR Urakami Station. IF. Sutton remained in Nagasaki after the attack, going on to succeed as a stevedore and general contractor and also proprietor of the English-language newspaper The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express. He died in Nagasaki in GNOH and was buried at Sakamoto International Cemetery.One reason he found Nagasaki comfortable may be the fact that the Japanese government granted him a lifelong exemption from taxation as compensation for the injury in GNLJ. IG. Consular Journal of Greater Britain (September N, GNON), quoted in The Nagasaki Press, HF October GNON. IH. Quoted in The Nagasaki Press, IF June GNOO. II. ‘Visit to the Nagasaki Prison to inspect the treatment of R.S. Harrison, marine of H.M.S.“Pigmy”, on GL February GOFF’ (FO HLH/NIL/KI–L). IJ. For a complete list of the businesses required to submit forms, see Kyoryu#chi tekkyo junbisho, (List of Preparations for the Removal of the Foreign Settlement), Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture (GJ–KKJ–I). IK. The Nagasaki Press, HI May GOFG. IL. Ibid., GH November GOFI. IM. The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, I October GNOJ. IN. Brian Burke-Gaffney, ‘The Man Who Could not Take Sides: A Sketch of the Life of Kuraba Tomisaburo#’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. I, Summer GOOK, pp. KG–MI. IO. Born in Liverpool in GNJM, James Walter was apprenticed at an early age to a local English silk manufacturer under whom he learned the
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techniques of silk spinning. In GNLM he sailed to Yokohama and entered the employ of a foreign firm in that port, assuming responsibility for silk and paper exports. Later he succeeded in establishing his own silk exporting business, and he rose to a position of prominence in theYokohama foreign settlement, serving as chairman of theYokohama Foreign Trade Association from GNOK to GNOM. JF. The Nagasaki Press, GJ February GOFH. JG. Ibid., GK April, N October and HL October GOFJ. JH. Cherry Blossoms:The Nagasaki Press Monthly, June GOFK, p. I. The editors of The Nagasaki Press launched this magazine in September the previous year to provide a vehicle for articles on local culture and history. The magazine ran for thirty-eight issues until its termination in GOFN. Copies are preserved today at the Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture. JI. The Nagasaki Press, GM January GOFK. JJ. The Illustrated London News, GN March GOFK. JK. D.Warner and P.Warner, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo- JapaneseWar, FNEI–EJ (NewYork:Charter House, GOMJ), p. KKK. JL. The Nagasaki Press, L June GOFK. JM. Ibid., O June GOFJ. JN. The Japan Mail, I November GOFK. JO. The Nagasaki Press, O November GOFK. KF. Ibid., GG November GOFK. KG. Ibid. KH. Ibid., N July GOFL. KI. FO MOL/HIM/GG. KJ. To#yo# Hinode Shimbun, G February GOFN. KK. Nagasaki City ed., Nagasaki shisei rokuju#gonenshi (Nagasaki City Chronology on the LKth Anniversary of Municipal Incorporation) (Nagasaki: GOKL),Vol.G, p. IMK. KL. Volya, HM April GOFL (first issue). KM. Ronald Hayashida and David Kittleson,‘The Odyssey of Nicholas Russel’, The Hawaiian Journal of History,Vol.GG, GOMM, pp. GGF–GHJ. KN. Wada Haruki, Nikorai rasseru (Nicholas Russel) (Tokyo: Chu#oko#ronsha, GOMI),Vol. H, p. GGF. Copies of Volya are preserved today at the Historiographical Institute,Tokyo University, Meiji Newspaper Collection,Tokyo, Japan. KO. Harold S.Williams, The Story of Holme Ringer & Co. Ltd. InWestern Japan FMKM–FNKM, p. JF. LF. The JapanWeekly Chronicle, GO March GOFN. LG. The Nagasaki Express, N November GNMI. LH. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GJH LI. The Nagasaki Press, HF October GOFN.
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Chapter G. Harold G. Parlett to Sir Claude MacDonald, N January GOFL (FO HLH/OKL). H. Shibata Keishi, Nagasaki no shokikisen to toro#ru gyogyo# (Early Steamships in Nagasaki and the Fish-trawling Industry) (Kaijishi Kenkyu#Vol.KO), pp. GM–GN. I. ‘Private Letters’ (Folder GM–GFLM–G, Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture).Thomas Glover remained in Tokyo until his death on GL December GOGG at the age of seventy-three.After funeral services in Tokyo and Nagasaki, he was buried with his wife Tsuru (who had died in GNOO) at Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki. J. The Nagasaki Press, K April GOGI. K. Vincent H. Gowen, Sunrise to Sunrise (Victoria:Trafford Publishing, HFFN), p. GO.The name ‘V.Gowen’ appears in the BelleVue Hotel guest list in the GG–GI November GOGI issues of The Nagasaki Press. L. Engineering, HJ June GOGF, p.NGJ. I thank John Ditchfield for this information. M. The Nagasaki Press, GI February GOFL.The project started in GNON when Mitsubishi imported the parts of a German-built torpedo boat and re-assembled these as a vessel called the Shirataka (‘White Hawk’), the prototype of the totally Mitsubishi-manufactured Shiratsuyu (‘White Mist’). N. Rose Richardson (née Mansbridge) to H.Takahashi, G January GONG. The letter is preserved in the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard Museum. George and Georgina Mansbridge died in GOGM and GOIK respectively and were buried under the same gravestone at Sakamoto International Cemetery.All of the six children moved to North America as adults. O. The Nagasaki Press, K November GOGJ. GF. J.T.Wawn to W.Conyngham Green, GF March GOGL (FO HLH/GHJL). GG. ‘Trading with the Enemy’ (Statutory List) Proclamation, GOGL, No. H. The text of the proclamation and a list of enemy concerns in Japan were published in the GL May GOGL issue of The Nagasaki Press.I thank Lane Earns for this information. GH. The governor of Nagasaki Prefecture attended both the funeral at the Boeddinghaus residence at No. J Dejima and the interment cere- mony at Sakamoto International Cemetery, a fact that indicates the German merchant’s respected position in Nagasaki prior to the war. GI. The Nagasaki Press, IF November GOGK. GJ. Ibid., HK February GOHF. GK. Ibid., GN December GOHJ. GL. Ibid., HG September GOHJ.The former synagogue was used thereafter as a warehouse by local residents, who referred to it inaccurately as the ‘Dutch Temple’. It was demolished in the GOLFs and not a trace of it remains today, but the gravestones of many former Jewish
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residents, including Haskel Goldenberg and Sigmund Lessner, are intact at Sakamoto International Cemetery. GM. Private Letters (Nagasaki Prefectural Library,GM–GFLM–G, H, JJ). GN. Nippon Yu sen Kaisha (ed.),The Travel Bulletin (March GOHO), pp. GJ–GK. ̄ GO. Charlotte Walker, ‘Fifty-Five Years in the Orient’, The Shanghai Woman, March GOIJ, p. GO. HF. The Nagasaki Press, HI January GOHG. HG. Ibid., N February GOHG. HH. The Nagasaki Press, HF December GOHG. HI. Nishi-Nippon Ju#ko#gyo# Kabushikaisha Nagasaki Zo#senjo (ed.), Mitsubishi nagasaki zo#senjoshi zokuhen (History of the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard),Vol. H, GOKG, p. IN.The number decreased to a low of L,GHM in GOIH, the lowest point in Nagasaki’s post-First World War depression, and then climbed back to a high of HK,FGI in GOJG during the construction of the battleship Musashi (Ibid., p. LL). HJ. The Glasgow Herald, GI March GOHH. I thank Alexander Mckay for this information. HK. The JapanWeekly Chronicle, GK May GOHJ. HL. From the entry in the Kyu#tochidaicho# (Old Land Register) preserved today at the Nagasaki District Legal Affairs Bureau.The warehouse was used by a series of local companies until being purchased by the Maeoka Rope Company of Osaka in GOKI and converted into a factory called ‘Takara Seiko#’ (Takara Rope Manufacturer). The building still stands in excellent condition on its original site. HM. The Nagasaki Press, HK November GOHJ. HN. Translation of a speech delivered in Kobe, Japan on HN November GOHJ. The translator is unknown. Text from an anonymous manuscript entitled SunYat Sen, China and Japan: Natural Friends, Unnatural Enemies (Shanghai: GOJG) preserved in the Library of Congress,Washington,D.C. HO. The exact date and circumstances of the removal of the building are unclear. The entry in the Kyu#tochidaicho# (Old Land Register) indicates that the property (No. JI, JJ, JK Sagarimatsu) was purchased by the Ryu#mon Ice Company on GI December GOHM. In its IF March GOHN issue, The Nagasaki Press reports the intention of the Ryu#mon Ice Company to build a factory on the ‘former site’ of the Nagasaki Hotel, indicating that the building had already been torn down by that date. IF. Kolbe was beatified by Pope PaulVI in GOMG and became the first Nazi victim to be proclaimed blessed by the Roman Catholic Church. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in GONH. IG. Henry H. Thomas to Sir John Tilley, GK September GOIF (FO HLH/HFGF). IH. Frederick Ringer’s widow Carolina had transferred the property to
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her eldest son Frederick Jr. and his wife Alcidie when she left Nagasaki in GOHG. Carolina died in London in September GOHJ. II. The British Ambassador to Japan sent a circular to his consuls in Nagasaki and other ports providing an English translation of the new law and advising them to warn all British subjects about its purport (FO MOL/GOM). IJ. Chinzei Gakuin (the Methodist school for boys) had moved to Takenokubo-machi in GOIF, and Tozan Gakuin (the Reformed Church in America school) had closed in GOII. IK. Kwassui Gakuin, ed., Kwassui gakuin hyakunenshi (One HundredYear History of Kwassui Gakuin) (Nagasaki, GONF), pp. GNK–OK. IL. For a detailed account of the construction of the Musashi, see Senkan musashi kenzo# kiroku kanko#iinkai, ed., Senkan musashi kenzo# kiroku: yamatogata senkan no zenbo# (The Construction of the ‘Musashi:’ A Portrait of the Yamato-class Battleships) (Tokyo: Atene Shobo#, GOOJ). IM. From documents preserved today at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Nagasaki Shipyard and Engine Works. I thank Naito# Hatsuho for this information. IN. Senkan musashi kenzo# kiroku: yamatogata senkan no zenbo# (The Construction of the ‘Musashi:’ A Portrait of the Yamato-class Battleships), p. MM. IO. From court documents currently in the possession of Elizabeth Newton (née Ringer).At the time of his arrest,Vanya was living with his British wife and three-year-old daughter Elizabeth in the family house at No. H Minamiyamate.Vanya was killed in action in Malaya in early GOJH, and Michael was taken prisoner on Sumatra the same year.After returning to England, Michael marriedVanya’s widow and raised the family on a farm in NorthYorkshire. JF. Nagasaki Nichinichi Shimbun, L June GOJF.Translated from Japanese by the author. JG. Despite the Japanese victory in negotiations, the agreement did not end the standoff between the Japanese government and the Great Northern Telegraph Co.After Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, the company came back with a vengeance, reasserting its rights and claiming a huge indemnity.A settlement was reached in GOKK, but the Great Northern Telegraph Co. continued to hold a stake in Japan’s telecommunications for years afterward. For details see Itoh Eiichi, ‘The Danish Monopoly on Telegraphy in Japan: A Case Study of an Unequal Communication System in the Far East’, Keio Communication Review (No. HO, HFFM), pp. NK–GFK. JH. Nagasaki City ed., Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi (Record of the War Damages Caused by the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, GOOG),Vol.G, pp. HN–II.
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JI. The letter is preserved today by the Yoshida family. I thank Yoshida Yukuo for this information.Translated from Japanese by the author. JJ. Personal communication from Joyce Morrison, currently residing in Aberdeen, Scotland. JK. Personal communication from Peter Cumberbirch, son of Robert N. Walker’s third daughter Kitty, currently residing in Victoria, Canada. JL. Lane R. Earns,‘At Home with a Friend:The Story of Sara Couch and Tomegawa Jun’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. G, Summer GOOI, pp. JM–KN. JM. Naimusho# Keihokyoku (Home Ministry Police Bureau) ed., Gaijigeppo# (Monthly Report on Foreign Affairs), July GOJH.
Chapter G. Personal communication fromYamashitaYoshio,Wilson Walker Jr. andYamashita Nami’s third son. H. Nagasaki City Chronology,p. GNL. I. A list of the perpetual leases still in effect in October GOIG is included in the Nagasaki British Consulate Archive (FO MOL/GOI/GFN–GGG). J. The Nagasaki-maru and Shanghai-maru sank, not under enemy fire, but as a result of the detonation of a Japanese-laid mine in May GOJH and a collision with a Japanese troop carrier in October GOJI, respectively. K. Jack Fitzgerald, The Jack Ford Story: Newfoundland’s POW in Nagasaki (St. John’s: Creative Book Publishing, HFFM), p. LL. L. Ibid., pp. MG–H. M. Ibid., pp. GML–M. N. Personal communication from Albert Walker (GOIN–HFFJ). O. Jack Fitzgerald, pp. GIH–J. GF. Nagasaki International Culture Hall ed. Nagasaki Speaks:A Record of the Atomic Bombing (Nagasaki, GOOI), p. GFL. GG. POW Research Network Japan data. GH. Personal communication from R.E. Bryer to Hirose Haruo of Nagasaki. Cited in Nagasaki International Culture Hall ed. Nagasaki Speaks:A Record of the Atomic Bombing, p. GFL–GFM. GI. Personal communication from Albert Walker. GJ. Jack Fitzgerald, p. GNJ. GK. Nagasaki City (ed.), Nagasaki shisei rokuju#gonenshi (A LK-year History of the Nagasaki Municipal Administration), (Nagasaki, GOKO), pp. OLL–O. GL. ‘British Consulate Building at Nagasaki’ (GHQ-SCAP Records, RG IIG, Box IOLO) GM. Personal communication from Albert Walker. GN. Lane Earns,‘Victor’s Justice: ColonelVictor Delnore and the U.S.
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Occupation of Nagasaki’, Crossroads:A Journal of Nagasaki History and Culture, No. I. Nagasaki, GOOK, pp. NH–I. GO. Yanagimoto Kenichi (ed.), Gekido#niju#nen (A Turbulent TwentyYears) (Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbunsha, GOLK), p. GMH. HF. The Mainichi, L August GOJN. HG. Harold S.Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland (Rutland,VT & Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle, GOLI), pp. HIF–G. HH. Programme of the ‘Grand Opera Madam Butterfly’ presented at the Mitsubishi Kaikan, Nagasaki on K and L November GOKI by the Nagato Miho Opera Company and hosted by the Nagasaki City Board of Education, the Nagasaki Music Promotion Association and the Nagasaki Amateur Music Association.Translated from Japanese by the author. Nagato visited the Glover House during her stay in Nagasaki and sang a song from the opera there. HI. ‘Ringer Family (British),Vol. II’ (GHQ-SCAP Records, RG IIG, Box IONO) HJ. Harold S.Williams, The Story of Holme Ringer & Co. Ltd. InWestern Japan FMKM–FNKM, pp. LN–MJ. A company called Nagasaki So#ko (Nagasaki Warehouses) assumed the role of local agent for Holme Ringer & Co. HK. Mabel continued to live with her sons in the Minamiyamate house after the death of her husband. She built a new house on the property in GOMJ and donated the old building to Glover Garden, where it is preserved to this day.Mabel died in Nagasaki in GOOL and was followed by her eldest son Albert in HFFJ.At the time of this writing, there are no buildings remaining on the lot at No. HNB Minamiyamate, but the garden, walls and entranceway remain intact and still in the possession of the Walker family. HL. Nagasaki Shimbun, HI April GOLJ. HM. Harold S.Williams Collection (National Library of Australia), MS LLNG/H/II/HFHL. HN. Yamaguchi Mitsuomi, Nagasaki no yo#fu# kenchiku (Western-style Architecture in Nagasaki), pp. GKM–LM.A survey conducted in HFFJ showed that the number had decreased to forty-nine: Nagasaki City Board of Education (ed.), Higashiyamate, Minamiyamate no rekishitekiisan wo machizukuri ni ikasu tame ni (Exploiting the Historic Assets of Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate in City-making) (Nagasaki, HFFJ), pp. O–GG. HO. Tagawa Ken, Nagasaki no yo#fu# kenchiku (Nagasaki’s Western Architecture), Mingei, No. JL, GOKL, p. GG.Translated from Japanese by the author.
Chapter G. For details see Lane R. Earns and Brian Burke-Gaffney, Across the Gulf of Time:The International Cemeteries of Nagasaki (Nagasaki:
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Paske-Smith, M. Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa in Tokugawa Days, DICF-DKIK. Kobe: J.L.Thompson and Co., CKDI. Pompe van Meerdevoort, J.L.C. Doctor on Desima (DKHJ-DKIF).Translated and annotated by Elizabeth Witterman and John Bowers.Tokyo: Voyager’s Press, CKIB. Reed, Edward J. Japan: Its History, Traditions, and Religions with the Narrative of aVisit in DKJL. London: John Murray,CJJB. Rochlin, Harriet. Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., CKJF. Ruxton, Ian (ed.). The Semi-Official Letters of British Envoy Sir Ernest Satow from Japan and China (DKLH–DLCI). Japan: Lulu.com, DBBI. Sakamoto Katsuhiko. Meiji no ijinkan (Foreign Houses of the Meiji Period).Tokyo:Asahi Shimbunsha, CKHG. Satow,Ernest. A Diplomat in Japan. London: Seeley,Service & Co., CKDC. Seigle, Cecilia Segawa. Yoshiwara:The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, CKKE. Senkan Musashi Kenzo# Kiroku Kanko#iinkai, ed. Senkan musashi kenzo# kiroku: yamatogata senkan no zenbo# (The Construction of the ‘Musashi’:A Portrait of theYamato-class Battleships).Tokyo:Atene Shobo#, CKKF. Shigefuji Takeo, Nagasaki kyoryu#chi to gaikokusho#nin (Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and Foreign Merchants).Tokyo: Kazama Shobo#, CKHI. Shigematsu Atsuo, Hoteru monogatari: nippon hoterushi (Hotel Tales:The History of Hotels in Japan).Tokyo: Shibata Shoten, CKHH. Slader, Douglas. The Japs at Home. London, Hutchinson & Co., CJKD. Smith, George (Bishop ofVictoria, Hong Kong). Ten Weeks in Japan. London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, CJHC. Spiecs, Gustav. Die Preussische Expedition nach Ostasien,Wahrend der Jare DKIC–DKIE. Berlin: Otto Spamer, CJHF. Sugiyama Shinya.‘Thomas Glover:A British Merchant in Japan, CJHC– CJIB,’ Business History,Vol.DH, No. D, CKJF. ——. Meiji ishin to igirisu sho#nin: tomasu guraba no sho#gai (The Meiji Restoration and a British Merchant:The Lifē of Thomas Glover). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, CKKE. Tagawa Ken. Nagasaki no yo#fu# kenchiku (Nagasaki’sWestern Architecture). Mingei, No. FH, CKGH. Thunberg, Charles Peter. Travels in Europe,Africa and Asia between the years DJJC and DJJL. London, CIKH. Tilley, Henry Arthur. Japan, the Amoor and the Pacific. London: Smith, Elder & Co., CJHC. Totani,Yuma. The Tokyo War Crimes Trial:The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Asia Center, DBBJ. Tracy,Albert. Rambles Through Japan without a Guide. London: Sampson, Low,Marston & Company,CJKD.
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UNESCO Higashi Ajia Bunka Kenkyu# Senta , ed.Oyatoi gaikokujin (Foreigners Employed in Meiji Japan).Tokyo, CKIG.̄ Verbeck,Guido F.‘History of Protestant Missions in Japan’ in Proceedings of the General Conference of Protestant Missionaries in Japan, DLCC.Tokyo, Methodist Publishing House, CKBC. Wada Haruki, Nikorai rasseru (Nicholas Russel).Two volumes.Tokyo: Chuoko#ronsha, CKIE. Wainright, S.H. The Methodist Mission in Japan. Nashville: Board of Missions, Methodist Episcopal Church, CKEG. Walker, Charlotte.‘Fifty-FiveYears in the Orient,’ The Shanghai Woman, March CKEF. Warner, D. and Warner, P. TheTide at Sunrise:A History of the Russo- JapaneseWar, DLCG–CH. NewYork:Charter House, CKIF. Washizu,Yoshio.‘Anti-Masonry in Japan – Past and Present,’ Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge. London, CKKG. Williams, Harold S. The Story of Holme Ringer & Co., Ltd. inWestern Japan, DKIK-DLIK. Rutland,Vt. & Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle Company, CKHJ. ——. Foreigners in Mikadoland. Rutland,VT & Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle, CKHE. ——. Shades of the Past, or Indiscreet Tales of Japan. Rutland,VT & Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle, CKGK. ——. Tales of the Foreign Settlement in Japan. Rutland,VT & Tokyo: Charles E.Tuttle, CKGJ. Wood, Frances. No Dogs & Not Many Chinese:Treaty Port Life in China DKGF–DLGF. London: John Murray Ltd., CKKJ. Wray, William D. Mitsubishi and the N.Y.K.: Business Strategy in the Japanese Shipping Industry. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, CKJF. Yamaguchi Mitsuomi. Nagasaki no yo#fu# kenchiku (Western-style Architecture in Nagasaki). Nagasaki: Nagasaki City Board of Education, CKHI. Yanagimoto Kenichi, ed. Gekido#niju#nen (A turbulent twenty years). Tokyo: Mainichi Shimbunsha, CKHG. Yokota Kisaburo#. Nihon ni okeru chigaiho#ken (Extraterritoriality in Japan). Tokyo: Kokkagakkaironshu#, CKEI.
Archives National Archives of the UK, British Foreign Office, Japan Correspondence, CJGH–CKBG, London. National Archives of the UK, British Foreign Office, Records of the Nagasaki Consulate from CJGK, London. U.S. National Archives, Despatches from United States Consuls in Nagasaki, Japan, CJHB–CKBH,Washington D.C.
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Bibliography
U.S. Naval Historical Center,Washington D.C. Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture, Nagasaki Local History Archives, Nagasaki, Japan. Nagasaki Municipal Museum, Western Book Collection, Nagasaki Japan. Yokohama Maritime Museum,Yokohama, Japan. Historiographical Institute, Tokyo University, Meiji Newspaper Collection,Tokyo, Japan.
Western Language Newspapers in Nagasaki The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser (CJGK) The Nagasaki Times (CJHJ–HK) The Nagasaki Shipping List (CJHK–IB) The Nagasaki Express (CJIB–IF) The Rising Sun (?-CJIF) The Nagasaki Gazette (?-?) The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express (CJIG–KI) The Cosmopolitan Press (CJIJ) The Kiusiu Times (CJIJ) The Nagasaki Observer (?-?) The Nagasaki Shipping List (CJKG–I) The Nagasaki Press (CJKI–CKDJ) Cherry Blossoms (Nagasaki Press Monthly,CKBF–J) Volya (Russian, CKBH–I)
Other Western Language Newspapers The China Mail (Hong Kong) The North China Herald (Shanghai) Israel’s Messenger (Shanghai) The Far East (Shanghai) The Japan Herald (Yokohama) The Japan Times Overland Mail (Yokohama) The Japan Weekly Mail (Yokohama) The Japan Weekly Chronicle (Kobe) The Kobe Chronicle (Kobe)
Other Primary Sources The Chronicle & Directory for China, Corea, Japan, the Philippines, Cochin China,Annam,Tonquin, Siam, Borneo, Straits Settlements, Malay States, etc. The Nagasaki Directory. Japan Herald Directory. Official Correspondence (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture). Circulars (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture). Despatches (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture).
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General Correspondence (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture). Foreign Correspondence (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture). Certificate of Title by Governor of Nagasaki (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture). Kyu#tochidaicho# (Old Land Register) (Nagasaki District Legal Affairs Bureau).
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Ackermann, G.H., EED Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Adams,William, G–H Commerce (ELIL), EJ–EK Akunoura, EI, EDJ, EDL, EII, EKH, EMH, Anglo-Satsuma War (ELJG), HE plate M Ansei Treaties (ELIL), EI–EK, FD, HD, JD, Alcock, Rutherford, EM–FE, FJ, FM, JF, JK EDJ anti-foreign movement, HD–E, EGD ‘all-red route’, EHE,EIH Aoki Shu#zo#, EIM Almeidà Luis d’, E–F Arnold,Alexander, MJ–K Alt & Co., GE–F, GL, HE, HG, JD, LI, MJ, Arnold, Charles, EDI, FHJ EDM Arnold, Robert, GL Alt, Elisabeth, GE–F, GL, plate EK atomic bombing, FFK–M Alt,William J., GD–G, GK, HK, IG, LI, EGD, Auld Lang Syne, EKM plates EG, FK Awajiya Tsuru, IH, FFH, plate HE Alt House, GF–G, EGE, EIF, FEM, FHD, plate EH Babbitt, Elwood G., EFM, FDI, plate HK American Consulate, EGE, EGG, EJD, Banzai Aerated Water Factory, EKD–E, FEG–EH FDJ–FDK American Occupation, F, FGE–G, FGJ, Barff, Kate, EHE–F plate JE Barff, Samuel, EHE Anglican Church. See English Bauduin,A.F.,EH Church. Bauduin,A.J., IG Anglo-Japanese Alliance (EMDF), EGM, Baxter, Katherine S., EEJ EJK, EKJ–L, EMM, FDH Belasco, David, EGF, EGH Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty Belle Vue Hotel, FL, KM–LD, EMG, FDF, (ELMH), EIM plate IE
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Bennett,Walter, plate HE Christianity, ban on, G–I, EJ, GH–K, Beth Israel Synagogue, EHL, EML–FDD IL–M, JE Birch, J.M., LJ Cho-Cho-san. See Madame Butterfly. ‘black list’, EMK–M Cho#shu# Clan, HD–F Blaikie, D.B., ID Clark, J.S., EII–J, ELG–H Blomhoff, Jan, L, FE Cliff House Hotel, EIG–H, EKF, ELL–M, boat racing, J, LF, FEF, plates FK, FL EMJ, FDD, FEE, FHE Boeddinghaus, C.E., EML–M coaling, Nagasaki’s unique way of, Bon Festival, GF, HL EHG, plate GM Bowie, Robert, EHL Collington, James, JL–M bowling, LD–F,EHG Collins, Charles, HD, FHG Boyd & Co., IE, EDG–EDH Commercial Hotel, FL Braga, Filomeno, IK–JD, JI Commercial House, FL British Consulate, EM, FF, FI, FL, GG, Conan, E.L., EIH JK–L, EHF, EID, ELD, ELI, EME–G, Conder, Josiah, EIH FEF, FFG, FGF, FHI, plate ID Cope, Francis, EKG, FDF ‘British Consulate Register of Births’, Correll, Irvin H., EGE, EGH, plate GK IH Couch, Sara, FEM ‘British Consulate Register of courtesans, I, IG–H, JE–F, EGG, EGL Foreign Marriages’, EEM Curtice, Raymond S., FDG British Episcopal Church, GE–I; see also English Church. Daitokuji Temple, GH, plate EI British Ladies Patriotic League, EMM Dejima: Dutch Factory, H–L, EE–EF, Brown,Albert R., MF EH, EL, FD, FHF, plates F, G, FM Bryer, Ronald E., FFL–GD as part of the foreign settlement, Buck,Alfred F.,EJE FJ, HK, EDG, EHE Buckland, P.J., EMF–G reclaimed land at, EKE–F, FDI bugyo#. See Nagasaki magistrate. Dejima Wharf, FDI–FDL, FGE, plate IG bund, HH, KJ, LI–J, MJ, EDG, EFK, EHK, Denby, John, FHG EID, EII, EKH, FEH, plate FD Denny Brothers of Dumbarton, LM, FDI Calder, John F.,EDK, FGM, FHD, FHJ Devine,William H., EDK, FHJ Canadian Pacific Railway Co. (CPR), Doeff, Hendrik, L EFG, EFJ, EGL–HE, EHG, EII Donker Curtius, Janus H., EF, FD Ceaupseng & Co., HL, EEL Dury, Leon, GI–J Central Hotel, EIG–H Dutch East India Company, I, JE, FHF Charlotte and Mary, ELEH visit of, M Dutch Cemetery, GI, FHF–G Cherry Blossoms, EKD Dutch Naval Detachments, EF–EH Chinese community, G, KE–F, KK, EFL, Duurkoop, Hendrik, FHF EHL dynamite, EDE–EDF Chinese Consulate, KG, EDM, EFL, EHD, EHL Empress of Japan, EFG, EFJ, EGL, EHD; Chinese Quarter, Old, J–K, EM, FG, GH, see also Canadian Pacific HK–L, EEI, EHD, plate H Railway Co. Chinzei Gakuin, EGE, EJI Enemy Property Act (EMEM), EMM Christian Endeavor Home for English Church (Episcopal), GH, EFE, Seamen, EGH–I, EHK, FEG, plate EHK, EKI, EMG–H GL English Church Day School, EHE Christians, underground, GI–K, IL–M English dictionaries, L, ED
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Index
English East India Co., H, M Gowen,Vincent H., EMG–H English education, GI, MJ–K Graham,Arnold, FGM Evans, Joseph H., FI–J Grant, Ulysses S., EGJ–K Evans,William, EJM Great Northern Telegraph Company, extraterritoriality, EJ, HD, JK–L, KG, KJ, KL, EDF, EDM, FEE, FEG, FEJ EGE, EIM–JF, FEJ Greatrex, F.C., FEI, FFD Green’s House. See Belle Vue Hotel. Fabius, Gerardus, EF Green, Mary, FL Feast of Saint Andrew, LJ–K Green, Matthew, FL Field, Franklin, GE grog shops, JJ–K, JM, KH–I Filipino, LM, FDI Groom, Francis, GL, HG, HM Five-power Treaty, FDH Fleischer, H.M., EDL, EDM Hall, John C., JJ–L, EIG Flowers, Marcus, HI–L, JL–KD Hall Russell & Co., ID–E Foad, Robert, HJ, FHH Hansard,Albert W.,FL–GE, IK, FHG Ford, Jack, FFI–J, FFK–GD Harrison, Edward, GL, HG Forrest, James N., LD Harrison, R.S., EJF Fortune, Robert, FH–K Harston,W.E.,FGM Four-power Treaty, FDH Helen Black, ID Frank, Prunella, FEF Hellyer, Frederick, GF Freemasons. See Masonic Lodge. Henderson, James, FHH fukoku kyo#hei, HE Hidden Christians. See underground Fukuda Sato, EFD–H, EIK, EKI, plate GH Christians. Fukuya restaurant, LJ, EDG Hill, John, EDK, EIJ Fukuzawa Yukichi, EDE Hirado, G–I, EH, HH fumie, IL–M Hiramatsu Giemon, GK Furber, Edward, EGJ Hirobaba, FG–H, HK, KG, LD–E fu#setsugaki,J Hitachi-maru, EII–K, EKG, FDF Hizen (Saga) Clan, FE, IE–F Gabb,Alfred, FEM Hodgson, C. Pemberton, EM–FF Gagarine, P.A.,EJL Holme, Edward Z., II, MD Gibson, Henry, LD–E Holme Ringer & Co., II, MD, EDE, Giroit, Marcel, EEM EDG, EDL–ED, EIE–F, EII, EJH–J, Glover Garden, FHD–E EJM, EKM, ELF, EMD–G, FEF–EI, FGF, Glover, Hana, plate HE FGK, FGM, plates ID, IJ; see also Glover House, GK–L, EGE, EIF, EME–F, Frederick Ringer. FGF–L, FHD–E, plate EK Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, HG Glover,T.A. See Kuraba Tomisaburo#. Ho#rai-maru, MG, EIL Glover,Thomas B., FE, GK–HI, HK, Hunt, Henry, GF HM–IJ, JF, LF–G, LK–MD, MI, Hutchings, John, HJ, FHH EDD–EDI, EDL, EFI, EGD, EGL–M, EJI, EKK, ELL, EME–F, FFH, FHI, Icarus, HJ, FHH plates EL, EM, GE, HE, HM ichibugin, FD, HG Goldenberg, Haskel, EHL Industrial Revolution, HI, FHI Goldsby, Barbara, FGG–H, plate JF Inman, Richard, EII Goldsby, Joseph C., FGG, plate JE International Bowling Saloon, LD Goodall, Eliza, EHE, FHJ Ipponmatsu. See Glover House. Goshinji Temple, G, FJ, KH, EKF, FHF–G Ito# Hirobumi, HD, EIJ Goto# Sho#jiro, EDD, EDG Iwasaki Hisaya, EJJ, EMF, EMI
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lwasaki Yanosuke, EDK–EDM, EFI, EKK, Kwassui Jogakko#, EIL, EKM, FEG EMI, plate GE Kyu#tochidaicho# (‘Old Land Register’), Iwasaki Yataro#, FG–H, MD–I, MK, EDE, FGG EDK, FDF Lake, Edward, HH Jalland,William, KM, EKD Lake, George, JJ Jamieson,W.,EDG ‘Land Regulations for the Port of Japan Brewery Company, II, EDL, EFI, Nagasaki in Japan’, FF EIE Lawrence, Simeon F.,EEM Japan Herald,The, FM League of Nations, FED–EE ‘Japanese marriage’, JF–G, JI, EEH, EGH Lessner, Sigmund, EHK–L, EML–FDD, Jardine Matheson & Co, FH–I, GL, HE, FDJ HG, HM, IF–G, EDD–EDE Lewis,Wilmot H., EIF Jesuits (Society of Jesus), F–H, plate E Liefde, G–H Jewish community, EHK–L, EML Liggins, John, GG joi. See anti-foreign movement. lighthouses, II–J, MF Ju#zenji neighbourhood, H, EEH–EJ, EGG Lloyds Register of Shipping, HG, MD, EIJ Kaempfer, Engelbert, J, FK Lobnitz Coulborn & Co., ML Kaga Maki, IH Long, John Luther, EGE–H, EKI Kagoshima, E, HE–G, MD, MI–J, ELK Loti, Pierre, EEG–EL, EGE–F, EGH, EGK–L, Kaientai, HJ EHD, plate GG Kaisei Gakko#, FDK, FEH Loureiro,Antonio, IK Karatsu, GK, EHF, EJM, ELG Loureiro, Jose, EDD Katsu Rintaro# (Kaishu#), EF Lundberg, Niels, EIL Kavanagh, M.J., MJ–K Kawanami Shipyard, FFI, FGF Macdonald, Ranald, ED–EE Kawazu Izunokami, HI Mackenzie, Kenneth R., FI, GL, HM kempeitai (military police force), FEF, Macmillan, Mabel Shigeko, FEF–EG, FEH–EI, FEK, FEM FFF–G, FGF, FGK kigyo# jo#kamachi (‘corporate castle Madame Butterfly, JE, EEG, EEI, EEJ, town’), EMI EGE–H, EKI, FGJ, FHD–E, plate JG Kirin Beer. See Japan Brewery ‘Madame Butterfly House’, FGG–I, Company. plates JE, JF Kirishima, EMJ Madame Chrysanthème, EEG–EL, EGF–H, Koga Ju#jiro, IG, EGL EGK, FGH, plate GG Kolbe, Maksymilian, FEE, FFD Major, John B., FG–H, GE, GL, HK Kosuge Ship Repair Dock (Patent Malcolmson,W.L.,EEK–EL Slip), ID–E, MI, plate FF Maltby, John, JM–KE Ko#yagi Island, FFI, FFK–L Manchuria, EJJ–K, EKG, EKJ–K, ELM, Koyama Hidenoshin, GG, GJ–K EMM, FED–EE, FFE Ko#yo#tei restaurant, FDF Mansbridge, George J., EDK, EHH–J, Kozone Rokuzaemon, FH EMJ, FHJ, plate IF Kung On & Co., HL Marco Polo Bridge Incident, FEF Kuraba Tomisaburo#, IH, EJI–J, EMD–F, Maruyama entertainment quarter, HJ, FDD, FDG, FDJ, FDM, FEE, FEI, FEK, IG, JE–I, KF, KH, EHG, FHH, plate FFF, FFH,FGD, FGF, FGH, FHI–J, FG plates HM, IK, JD Maryport, LL–MD, ML, EFG–H, EIH, EIK, Kusaka Yoshio, EED ELD
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Masonic Lodge, LI–J, EHJ, FEG Nagasaki Express,The, HL, IK–M, JG–I, Matsudaira Zushonokami Yasuhira, K KL, LG, MF, EIE Maximov,Alexandr, FDG Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters, EJH Medical Hall, KM, EHL, EJM–KD Nagasaki Hotel, EIH–I, EJM, ELF, EMK, Megasaki. See Umegasaki. FDE, FDG, FDL–FDM, FEI, plate HF Meiji, Emperor (Mutsuhiro), HI, IG, Nagasaki International Club, EJG–J, EGI EJL, EKF mekakushi so#ko (‘blindfold Nagasaki magistrate, K, EF–EH, HE, HI, warehouse’), FEH–EI IE, plate K Methodist mission, EGE, EIL, EJI, FEG Nagasaki-maru, FDI, FFH, plate IG Mexican silver dollars (yo#gin), FD, HG Nagasaki Press,The, HF, HH, II, EIE, EIF, Michinaga Ei, EGL, EKF EIK, EJE, EJI, EJK, EKD, EKH, EKI, Mills, Henry and Elizabeth, EHH EKM, ELD, ELH, ELI, ELL, EMK, FDD, Miss Butterfly and Miss FDG, FDK, FDL–FDM Chrysanthemum, FGH–I Nagasaki Racing and Athletic Mitchell, James, GD Committee, LF, plate FL Mitsubishi Co., FH, IE, II, LJ–K, ME–K, Nagasaki Shipping List,The (first MM–EEE, EFD, EFI, EFL, EHH, EJJ, incarnation), IK, LG, EIE EKK, EMF, EMI, EMK, FGJ, FGL, FHH, Nagasaki Shipping List,The (second FHJ incarnation), EIE Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard, EI, IE, Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, KF, LJ, EDL–EDM, EEF, EGF, EII–K, The, FM–GE, IK, LE, EID, FHG, plate EKG, ELH, EMG–J, FDG–FDH, FDM– EF ED, FEH–EI, FFH–J, FFL, FGF, FGM, Nagasaki Steam Roller Flour Mill, FHJ–K, plates GF, II EED–EE Miura Anjin. See William Adams. Nagasaki Steamship Fishery Miura Tamaki, FHE Company, EMD–F Mogi, EHH, FGJ Nagato Miho Opera Company, Moji, ELG–H, FEE, FGK FGH–I Moore,Aileen, EMG Nakano Waka, EJJ, EMF, FEI, FEK, FFH, Mori Arayoshi, FDL plates HM, JD Morrison, George, EM, FF, FI–J, FM, Naminohira, FI GM–HE, IE, EDJ, FHG Nanking (Nanjing), ED, EI, FEG Municipal Council, FM, GE, JJ, LG–H National spiritual mobilization Murai Mamoru, EIK movement, FEF Murch, Edward, FEM Neeson, Jean, FHI Musashi, FEH–EK, FFH, FGF Netherlands Trading Society, FJ, IG, Myo#gyo#ji Temple, EM, FF, FH–I, FL, EID EDD New Military Secrets Protection Law Nabeshima Naohiro, FE (EMGK), FEF, FEI Naigaijin kyokon jinmeibo, EFD–E Newton, George, JF ‘Nagasaki Affair’, KF–G Nicholas II, EGK–L, EKF Nagasaki Amateur Dramatic Corps, Niigata-maru, MH, MK–EDD, EFI LG Nippon Yu#sen Kaisha (NYK), LH, Nagasaki Club, LI, EFE, EHH, EHJ, FDG, EDK–EDL, EFF, EFG, EFI–L, EII, FEG EMK, FDF, FDH–FDK, FHE, FHJ Nagasaki Customs, EDF, EIH, ELG, FGF Noel, Gerald, EKL Nagasaki English School (Nagasaki Noordhoek Hegt, J.B., EFI Eigo Gakko#), MJ–K Norman,Arthur, JK, KE–F, LJ, EIE
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NYK. See Nippon Yu#sen Kaisha. Quin, J.J., EDM
Obama, LD, EHH–I, FFF railway, on the Nagasaki Bund, HG–I Occupation forces, F, FGE–G, FGJ, plate Reformed Church in America, GI, JE EEM, EID Okabe Suruganokami, FE ‘Register of Foreign Marriages’, Okinawa, ME–F, FFH EEM–FD O¯ kuma Shigenobu, GI, FDD Rentiers, John B., EJF O¯ mura Clan, EI, FF, HE Ringer,Alcidie Eva, EMG, FEM, FGG opium, M–ED, EJ, JM–KE Ringer, Frederick, II, MD, EDM–ED, Opium Wars, ED, EI EIE–F, EIH, EIM, EJH–I, EJM, EKD, Oriental Hotel, FL ELE–F, plate HJ O¯ ura Catholic Church, GJ–K, LE, EDF, Ringer, Frederick Jr., EIF, ELF, EMG, EDK, EHK, plates EJ, JH FEI, FGM O¯ ura International Cemetery, FHG–H Ringer, Sydney EIF, ELF, EMG, FEF–EI, O¯ mura Sumihiro, HE FEL, FGJ–K, plate IL O¯ mura Sumitada, F Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express,The, O¯ ura Tomachi,EI, EM, FF JK, KE, KG, LH, LI, LJ, MJ, EDE, EDG, EDI, EDJ, EDM, EEK, EFE, EFM, EIE Pacific Mail Co., MH–I R.N.Walker & Co., EIL, ELD, ELI, EMD, Palmer, H.O., EIE FDJ, FEG, FFF Parker, Edwin, FEM Robertson, David F.,EDK Parkes, Harry, EJ, HF, JJ Roosevelt,Theodore, EGK, EKJ Parlett, Harold G., ELK–L Rossier, Pierre, FJ, EJH, plate ED Peace Preservation Law (ELLK), EDM Rozhdestvensky, Z.P.,EKG Pearl Harbor attack, FEL, FFF Russel, Nicolas, ELE, plate HI Peninsular and Occidental Steam Russian Consulate, EHK, EJL Navigation Co. (P&O), MF, MH, Russian Navy, KH, FHG MI, EHG Russian newspaper. See Volya. perpetual leases, FF, EIL, EIM, EJG, FDK, Russian Quarter, KH, EDJ, EGL FEJ, FFG Russo-Japanese War (EMDH–I), EGM, Perry, Commodore Matthew, ED, EE, EKD, EKG, EKJ–L, ELH, ELK, EME, EGK EMJ, FFE, FHG Petitjean, Bernard, GJ–K Ryu#jo,(Jho Sho Maru), IG Phaeton, K–L Ryu#kyu# Islands, MF Phantom, GD Phipps, G.H., EHF Saigo# Takamori, MI, MK Pompe van Meerdervoort, J.L.C., EH, Saikyo#-maru, EFI JF Sakamoto International Cemetery, II, Port Arthur (Lushun), EFL, EJK–L, EDI, EEM, EHE–F, EMK, FDD, FFH–HK, EKE–G plate JI Powers, Rodney H., EHK Samariva, G., EIG POWs, FFI, FFM–GD Sampson, EL–EM prisons, foreigners in Japanese, EJD–F Saris, John, H prostitution, JD–J, KH, EEH, EEJ Satow, Ernest, HF, EGL, EGM Public Hall, LG, EKM–LD Satsuma, bombardment of. See Puccini, Giacomo, JE, EEG, EGF, EGH, Anglo-Satsuma War. EKI, FHE Satsuma-Cho#shu# Alliance, HF Putiatin, Evfimii, EE, KH Satsuma Clan, HD–F, ID, MD, MI
FLJ 14 Index:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page 287
Index
Satsuma Rebellion, MI, MK, EFD Takachiho-maru, EFD–F Scottish presence, LJ–K Takashima Coal Mine, FE, IE–G, II, Seamen’s Home. See Christian KD, LJ, LK, LM, EDD–EDH, EDJ, FHH Endeavor Home for Seamen. Tanaka and Amenomori Joint Sensho#kaku, EDL, plate GF Hospital, FDE–EE Shanghai, ED, EM, FK, FM, GL, HE, HG, HM, Tan Ben Tek,EFD IL, KL, LD Taylor,Albert, EMD Shanghai line. See Yokohama- tea trade, M, EJ, FE, GD, GL–M, HG, II, JM, Shanghai line. MJ Shanghai-maru, FDI, FDK, FFH telephone lines, EDL–ED, EIF Shaw, J.J., EII, ELG tennis, LE–F, EDE Shaw, Ronald F.,FFL TenWeeks in Japan. See George Shimabara Rebellion, H Smith. Shimauchi Hachiro#, FGH–I Thomas, Henry H., FEE–EF Shimazu Hisamitsu, HE–G, MI Thunberg, C.P.,I–J, FK Shimonoseki, HF–G, EFM, ELG–H, FEE, To#go# Heihachiro#, EKG, EKK FEI, FGK, FHH to#jinyashiki. See Chinese Quarter. Shinchi, HK–L, KE, EFL, EHL Tokugawa Ieyasu, G Siebold, Philipp F.von, J, EE Tokugawa shogunate, G–I, J, L, EE–EG, Simmons, Nathaniel, FL EI–EJ, EM–FD, FF, FJ, GH, HD, Sino-Japanese War (ELMH–I), EFK–L, HF–G, HI–K, JE, EDI–EDJ, FHF EGM, EHL, EII, EJK Tokutomi Soho#, EFM Smith, George (Bishop of Hong Tomegawa Jun, FEM Kong), GG–H, JF tonarigumi, FEF Smith,Thomas, FHG Tosa, FDG–FDH Société des Mission Etrangères de Tosa Clan, FG, HJ, MD–E Paris, GI tourism, EGI, ELG, FGI–J, FHE Soembing (Kanko#-maru), EE–EF Toyotomi Hideyoshi, G, MF Spanish-American War, EFM, EHD Tracy,Albert, EEK steam locomotive, HG–I Treaty of Kanagawa, EE Specks, Juris G., EMK Treaty of Nanking, ED, EI Spencer, John Poyntz, EGL–M Treaty of Shimonoseki, EFM Stirling, James, EF–EH, IE, FFI, plates I, Treaty of Tienstin, EI–EJ J, K, L Triomphante. See Pierre Loti. Stoddart, John M., LJ, EDH–EDI, FHJ Troup, James, EDF, EDH Stoessel,Anatoly M., EKE–G Tsukumo Sho#kai, ME Stout, Henry, EEM Strategic Zone Law, EJG–H Ueno Hikoma, EHG, EJH, plates GG, GJ Stunberry, G., EIJ Umegasaki, FH, HK, KG, KL, KM, EDF, EDM, Suganuma, Mary, EHL EHK, EHL, EML–M, FEJ, FEM Sun Yat-Sen, EGM–HD, FDK underground Christians, GI–J, IL–M Sutton, Charles, LI, EIL ‘unequal treaties’, EI, EIM, FFG Suwa Shinto Shrine, JD, EGK, EHG Unzen, LD, EHH–J, FDF, FFF, FHI Suzuki Tengan,EHD Urakami, GJ, IL–M, EHG, EHM, FDK, FFK, synagogue. See Beth Israel FHJ–K Synagogue. Verbeck, Guido, GI Tagawa Ken, FHE Vladivostok, KL, EFE, EHI, EKG–H, ELE, Taiwan Expedition, ME–G, EFL FEJ
FLK 14 Index:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page 288
Nagasaki:The British Experience, 1854–1945
Volya (Russian newspaper), ELE White,Anna, FEH Whitshed, James H., FHH Wai Egno, KE–F Wicks, Caroline, FL Walker, Charlotte, EFI–K, EIG–H, EKI, Williams, C.M., GG–I EKM, ELE, ELM, EMM–FDF, FEK–EL, Williams, Harold S., FGH–I FHE, plates GI, GJ, HL Wilson, John, HM Walker, Robert. N., MG, EFD–H, EIK–M, Wilson, J.H., EDK EKD, EKI, EKM–LD, ELG–J, FEM, Winchester, Charles, GG plates GH, HG, HH, HK Winzen, Leonard, EIG Walker, Robert Jr, ELL, FDF, FDJ–FDK, WorldWar, First, EMM, FDK FDM, FEE–EG, FFF–G, FFJ–K, FFM, WorldWar, Second, F, MF, FHJ FGF, FGK, plates HG, HK Wright, Herbert M., GD, LI Walker,Wilson, LL–ME, MG–H, MK, EDD, EFH–K, EGD, EIG–H, ELE, ELL–M, Yacht. See Phantom. EMJ–K, FHJ, plates GI, GJ, HL Yamawaki Masakatsu, EDH, EDM Walker,Wilson Jr, EIH, ELK–M, FFF, yo#fu#kenchiku. See Western-style plate GJ architecture. Walsh Hall & Co., MJ, EGE Yo#gakusho, GI Walsh, John G., FD, FI, EGE Yokohama-Shanghai line, MG–I, MM Walter, James, EJJ Yokoyama Toraichiro#, EJH–I, EJL, Warren,William, FL EKE–F, EKL warships, construction of, EMJ, FDG– yonban kuzure, IL FDH Yo#sai chitai ho#. See Strategic Zone Washington Naval Treaty (EMFF), FDH Law. Watts,William O., EKI, plate HK Yu#gao-maru, EDL Wawn, J.T., EMK Western-style architecture, FK, GK, Zohrab,MD plate GD
FLL 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page i
Portuguese ship and Jesuit Headquarters at the tip of the Nagasaki promontory. From an early folding screen. (Nagasaki Municipal Museum)
Lithograph showing Dejima Island and Nagasaki Harbour in the Edo Period, from Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion (DKHI, Boston, Massachusetts).The Chinese warehouses at Shinchi and the site of the future Nagasaki Foreign Settlement are portrayed on the left. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page ii
Dutchmen enjoy a meal in the dining room of the Dejima Dutch Factory, with an Indonesian servant carrying cuisine and two Japanese courtesans looking on. From the Rankan Naizu (Views Inside the Dutch Factory) by Kawahara Keiga. (Nagasaki Municipal Museum)
Nineteenth-century Nagasaki woodblock print depicting a Chinese merchant with his Japanese consort. Nagasaki prints were prized because they conveyed information about foreign culture available only in Nagasaki. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page iii
The lithographs inserted in The Illustrated London News article on James Stirling’s DKHG visit to Nagasaki provided the British public with some of their earliest views of Japan. Map showing the position of the four British warships anchored outside Nagasaki Harbour, with evidence that the British crews had noted coal diggings on Takashima Island.
View of Nagasaki Harbour from the British ships.A chain of boats provided a feeble blockade. 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page iv
The neighbourhoods near the Ohato waterfront were hidden behind a long curtain for the visit of Admiral Stirling and his party to the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office (upper right). (Author’s collection)
A page from the ‘Convention: Navigation and Commerce, Ports of Nagasaki and Hakodadi’ signed on DG October DKHG by Admiral James Stirling and his Japanese counterparts. (National Archives, Kew, FO >9/:>/8) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page v
The Nagasaki Seitetsusho (Iron Works) at Akunoura was one of the first buildings of red- brick construction in Japan.The Western-style building and the fisherman with a topknot captured in the foreground symbolize the dramatic changes that Japan was undergoing around the year DKIC. (Bauduin Collection, Nagasaki University Library)
Pierre Rossier’s photograph of the proposed site of the Nagasaki Foreign settlement was one of the first panoramas taken in Japan.The huts of O¯ ura Tomachi village cluster in the foreground, with the mud flats at the mouth of O¯ ura Creek beyond. Myo gyo jiTemple and a flagpole flying the Union Jack are visible on the opposite hillside.Threē years̄ after this photograph was taken,Thomas Glover built his famous house at the base of the huge pine tree on the crest of the hill. (National Archives, Kew, FO :
Map showing the original topography of the O¯ ura district and surrounding areas. (National Archives, Kew, MFQ8/>;
The Nagasaki Shipping List and Advertiser, Japan’s first newspaper. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page vii
William Alt in Nagasaki ca DKII. (Courtesy of David Carmichael)
The former Alt House has been designated an Important Cultural Asset by the Japanese government and remains today in the Glover Garden complex in Nagasaki. (Photograph by the author) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:36 Page viii
Early picture postcard showing the main hall at the former DaitokujiTemple, where the first formal Christian services were held by George Smith in April DKIC. (Author’s collection)
O¯ ura Catholic Church shortly after construction. (Courtesy of Ezaki Bekko Shop) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page ix
The Glover House ca DKII, with the great pine tree looming behind it.The woman sitting in the chair in the foreground is Elisabeth Alt (nee Earl), the wife of William Alt.The others are unidentified. (Courtesy of David Carmichael)
Thomas Blake Glover in Nagasaki ca DKII. (Bauduin Collection, Nagasaki University Library) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page x
The European community of Nagasaki enjoyed a rare excursion to the beach at Nezumijima (Rat Island) in DKIH, accompanied by guards from the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office.Thomas Glover is sitting in front with his hat on his foot, and William Alt is behind him to the left with a dog in his lap. (Bauduin Collection, Nagasaki University Library)
The O¯ ura Bund (waterfront street) and O¯ ura neighbourhood taken from Minamiyamate ca DKII. The large building halfway down the waterfront is the Alt & Co. office at No.J O¯ ura.The lamps and stone path installed along the waterfront in DKID are visible, with Dejima and the city of Nagasaki in the background. (Nagasaki University Library) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xi
The Nagasaki British Consulate drew up this map showing the process of reclamation of land from the harbour and the creation of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement from DKIC to DKJC. (National Archives, Kew, MFQ8/>;
The Kosuge Slip Dock soon after construction. Japanese people called it soroban dokku (abacus dock) because of its resemblance to the Oriental calculating device. (Nagasaki Bunkensha Co.) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xii
The Maruyama entertainment quarter (Yoriai-machi street) taken around DKIH as part of an investigation into the conditions awaiting American sailors in Japanese ports. Courtesans of tender age are looking at the camera from the second-storey balcony of a brothel. (U.S. Naval Historical Center)
View of O¯ ura Creek from the nearby hillside. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xiii
O¯ ura Creek, looking from the waterfront towards the hills.The buildings facing the upper part of the creek on the right are the ‘grog shops’ that perplexed foreign authorities and spoiled Nagasaki’s reputation overseas. (Nagasaki University Library)
The waterfront street in O¯ ura as depicted in an early picture postcard.The Union Jack is flying in front of the British Consulate at No.I O¯ ura. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xiv
‘TheWinning Crew’ at the regatta in May DKII was comprised of (from left to right) Frederick Ringer, Forster,William Alt, J.C. Smith and Robert Hughes. Ringer, Smith and Hughes were employees of Glover & Co. (Courtesy of David Carmichael)
The boat house of the Nagasaki Racing and Athletic Committee teemed with participants and foreign and Japanese guests at this regatta in the late nineteenth century. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xv
View from the Higashiyamate hillside looking over the Western-style buildings in Umegasaki, with Dejima visible in the distance. (Author’s collection)
The Western-style buildings of the O¯ ura neighbourhood line up in neat rows, with Nagasaki Harbour in the background. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xvi
Thomas Glover with Iwasaki Yanosuke, the second generation president of Mitsubishi Co. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)
The building berth at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard depicted in a hand-coloured picture postcard. Sensho kaku, the Western-style villa of the Iwasaki family,is visible among the trees to the left. (Author’s collection)̄ 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xvii
Pierre Loti (right) and his compatriotYves, with Chrysanthème seated.Taken at the studio of pioneer photographer Ueno Hikoma in July DKKH. (Société de Géographie, Paris)
Robert N.Walker and his wife Sato (nee Fukuda) in November DKKK.Walker sent these photographs to his father in Maryport, England, apparently to announce his official marriage. (Courtesy of DerekWaite) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xviii
Wilson and Charlotte Walker, soon after their marriage in DKKC. (Courtesy of DerekWaite)
Wilson and Charlotte Walker with their children and nieces and nephew in Nagasaki in January DKLH.The photograph was taken in the studio of pioneer photographer Ueno Hikoma. (Courtesy of DerekWaite) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xix
The house at No.DE Higashiyamate (right edge) around the time that the Correll family inhabited it.Above it are the buildings of Kwassui Jogakko, the Methodist mission school for women. (Nagasaki University Library)
The Christian Endeavor Home for Seamen at No.EI O¯ ura as depicted in an early hand-coloured picture postcard. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xx
Early hand-coloured picture postcard showing workers conveying coal to the bunker of a foreign passenger ship anchored in Nagasaki Harbour. (Author’s collection)
Sampan boats float on O¯ ura Creek in front of the stores of Urso & Co. (right) and Curnow & Co. O¯ ura Catholic Church is visible over the latter. Early hand-coloured picture postcard. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxi
The participants at the wedding of Hana Glover and Holme Ringer & Co. employee Walter Bennett, celebrated in Nagasaki in January DKLJ, posed for a photograph in front of Ipponmatsu.The bride’s parents,Thomas and Tsuru Glover, are standing behind the groom. Glover’s younger brother Alfred is on the far left, his younger sister Martha (woman in a black coat) behind the bride, Kuraba Tomisaburo behind Martha, and Frederick and Carolina Ringer on the far right. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)
Early hand-coloured picture postcard depicting the Nagasaki Hotel. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxii
Robert N.Walker with his nine children after moving back to Japan. (Front row) Wilson, Gladys andViolet. (Middle row) Kitty,Margaret and Maude. (Standing) Annie, Robert, John and Robert Jr. (Courtesy of AlbertWalker)
Robert N.Walker playing croquet with his children on the lawn at No.J Higashiyamate ca DLCH. (Left to right) Maude, Margaret,Wilson, Robert,Violet and Kitty. (Courtesy of Peter Cumberbirch) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxiii
(above) Nicholas Russel with his sons in Nagasaki. (Nagasaki Bunkensha Co.) (right) Frederick Ringer (DKFK–DLCJ) (Glover Garden, Nagasaki)
Robert N.Walker with his children and grandchildren prior to leaving Nagasaki for Canada in DLCK. (Standing, left to right) Gladys, John, Kitty, Elwood Babbit (Annie’s husband),William Watts (Margaret’s husband), Maude and Robert Jr. (Sitting, left to right) Annie, Robert,Violet and Margaret. (Courtesy of AlbertWalker) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxiv
Cabinet photograph showing Wilson and Charlotte Walker with their daughters and Japanese servants at No.DE Minamiyamate in March DLCL. (Author’s collection)
KurabaTomisaburo and Waka pose withThomas Glover in the garden at Ipponmatsu during a visit to Nagasaki by the latter around DLCH. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)
Hand-coloured picture postcard depicting the buildings on the O¯ ura waterfront in the early DLEC’s. (From left to right) the American Consulate, which moved to No.H O¯ ura in DLED; the British Consulate, a building of red-brick construction completed in DLCK; the Holme Ringer & Co. office at No.J O¯ ura, and the Gencho Money Exchange, a Japanese company that took over the Western- style building at No.K O¯ ura. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxv
Early hand-coloured picture postcard showing the Belle Vue Hotel at No.DD Minamiyamate. (Author’s collection)
The Mansbridge family in Nagasaki around DKLI. George’s wife Georgina was the adopted daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Mills, longtime residents of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. (Nagasaki Bunkensha Co.)
Picture postcard showing the Nagasaki-maru anchored at Dejima Wharf around DLFE.The caption is inscribed in Esperanto, a language favoured in prewar Japan as an alternative to English.The Japanese inscription includes (in parentheses) a notification that the image was passed by censors of the Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxvi
Hand-coloured picture postcard showing Chinese shops on the back street of the O¯ ura neighbourhood around DLEC. (Author’s collection)
The DJ,CCC-tonne passenger liner Asama-maru was launched from the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard on FC October DLEK.This photograph shows the ship anchored nearby but also captures the buildings in the Sagarimatsu neighbourhood of the former foreign settlement. Most of the buildings, including the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (large building in the centre) are intact, but the Nagasaki Hotel is gone. (Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxvii
The foreign staff of Holme Ringer & Co. around DLFH.The three men seated in the centre are Michael Ringer (Sydney’s elder son), Fred Ringer, and Sydney Ringer. KurabaTomisaburo is seated at the far right. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture) ̄
Kuraba Tomisaburo (standing) entertains guests at a May DLFI party held on the lawn in front of the former Alt Housē at No.DG Minamiyamate, occupied at the time by Fred and Alcidie Ringer. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxviii
Sydney Ringer with his sons Michael (left) andVanya in the early DLFCs, after the two young men had returned to Nagasaki from England to take up positions in Holme Ringer & Co. (Courtesy of O¯ ura Seinenkai)
View of the O¯ ura neighbourhood and Nagasaki Harbour taken from Higashiyamate in the postwar period.The ‘blindfold warehouse’ is still standing directly in front of the former British and American consulates. (Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxix
Kuraba Tomisaburo and Waka at No.L Minamiyamate in DLGC. In the lower right corner is the ink stamp of Kempeitaī censors saying ‘Inspected by Nagasaki Fortress Headquarters’. (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture)
Captain Joseph Goldsby (centre) with other American Occupation personnel in front of the former Glover House (Ipponmatsu) in DLGJ.The inscription on the back calls the building ‘Mme Butterfly House’. (Courtesy of Lane Earns) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxx
The page from the DC August DLGK issue of the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun with the article entitled ‘House of “Madame Butterfly” Discovered’ and the photograph of Barbara Goldsby. (Nagasaki Prefectural Library)
Postwar picture postcard showing the former Glover House but calling it the ‘Memorial Place of Madam Butterfly’. (Author’s collection) 15 Plates:Nagasaki 17/8/09 13:37 Page xxxi
The path stretching up the hillside between O¯ ura Catholic Church and the old Walker residence at No.EKB Minamiyamate.The flagstones and steps remain intact, silently conveying the atmosphere of the former Nagasaki Foreign Settlement. (Photograph taken by the author)
Cherry blossoms at Sakamoto International Cemetery,Nagasaki 5Pae:aaai1//91:7Pg xxxii Page 13:37 17/8/09 Plates:Nagasaki 15
Map of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement soon after its abolition as an official entity in DKLL.The neighbourhoods of O¯ ura and Sagarimatsu flank O¯ ura Creek to the left and right, with the hillside Higashiyamate and Minamiyamate residential districts in the rear. Umegasaki, Hirobaba, Dejima, Shinchi and the former Chinese Quarter are evident on the left. (National Archives, Kew)