Among the places we went on Christmas Day 1993 was Glover Garden in Nagasaki. Among the things you can find at Glover Garden — which is best known for the Glover House, though I don’t seem to have any images of it — is a bust of Thomas Blake Glover (1838-1911). Naturally I had to pose beside it.

Glover was a Scotsman of considerable talent and ambition who went East. The Japan Times noted on the centenary of his death, in something of a rambling article: “When he arrived in Nagasaki in 1859, aged 21, Glover was at first allotted accommodation in the city’s concessions area, called Dejima, where he would soon build up a mini-empire of real estate. In 1861, he founded Glover Trading Co. (Guraba-Shokei) to deal illegally… in ships and weapons with the rebellious Satsuma and Chosu clans in Kyushu and the Tosa from Shikoku, who were all bridling in those tumultuous times against the policies of the so-called bakufu government of the shogunate.”

That is, he was one of the foreign merchants that helped overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. As you’d expect, after the Meiji Restoration, he profited mightily as a businessman in the new Japan as he helped the new rulers — his old allies — industrialize the nation.

The garden overlooks Nagasaki Harbor. This view shows how hilly the surrounding terrain is. I don’t have any idea who the man or the child are.
A closer view of Nagasaki Harbor.
Looks like a couple of liquefied natural gas tankers were in port at the time. Not something that Glover would have ever seen from that view, but he probably would have appreciated it.