Bakumatsu to Meiji · 1838–1911
Thomas Glover
Thomas Blake Glover · Japan
Scottish merchant
He came to Nagasaki from Shanghai in 1859 at the age of 21. Starting in the green-tea trade, he went on to drive Japan's modernisation in shipbuilding and coal mining. In 1863 he helped the 'Chōshū Five' sail to London to study, and in 1865 helped 15 students from the Satsuma domain go abroad. He sold weapons to Satsuma and Chōshū, some of them in breach of the treaties between Britain and Japan and of Japanese law at the time.
Where the story happened
Places connected with this person
History · Glover Garden
A Scottish merchant and the samurai of the Bakumatsu
The Glover House was built by the Amakusa carpenter Koyama Hidenoshin and completed in 1863, the oldest surviving Western-style house in Japan. Glover met anti-shogunate activists from Chōshū and Satsuma here; also in 1863, he arranged for the 'Chōshū Five' to study secretly in London, among them Itō Hirobumi, later Japan's first prime minister.
