ONE of the international relationships which the Scottish Government has tried to build on over the years is our links with Japan. These go back a long way, to the middle of the 19th century, in fact, which –considering Japan was officially closed to foreigners except the Dutch until the late 1850s – means Scots were among the first Westerners to settle in Japan and both inspire and take advantage of the great modernisation of the country under the 122nd Emperor, Mutsuhito, better known as Meiji.

Five Scottish men in particular played major roles in the development of Japan from an agrarian feudal society to an industrial giant under Meiji, who reigned from 1867-1912. Over the next three weeks I will be profiling these five, who are much more famous in Japan than they are in Scotland.

I suspect most National readers will have heard of the greatest of them, Thomas Blake Glover, but are you aware of Richard Henry Brunton, Alexander Cameron Sim, Henry Dyer and William Kinninmond Burton? There were other Scots in Japan during the Meiji period but I have chosen this Famous Five for their influence on several aspects of modern Japanese life.

Today, I will devote a whole column to Thomas Blake Glover, who I have always considered to be one of the great unsung figures of Scottish history – a man who rose from humble beginnings as the son of a coastguard official to literally dining with and influencing perhaps the greatest emperor in Japanese history, as well as being the guiding hand behind the establishment of the giant Mitsubishi corporation that rose to become Japan’s biggest industrial group.

READ MORE: Scottish Founding Father Dr John Witherspoon left a lasting legacy

Glover was born in Fraserburgh on June 6, 1838, the son of an English former Royal Navy officer, Thomas Berry Glover, then an officer of the coastguard in the Aberdeenshire town, and his wife Mary, nee Findlay. The couple had eight children in all, seven boys and one girls, with Glover being the

fifth born.

What had been their house on Commerce Street in the town was destroyed by a German bomb in one of the many air raids on Fraserburgh during the Second World War but there is a blue plaque which marks Glover’s birthplace.

At the behest of the coastguard, his father moved the family first to Grimsby and then back to Aberdeenshire to Collieston before he was promoted to chief officer at the coastguard station at Bridge of Don, now in the City of Aberdeen, to where the family moved in 1851.

They were not poor, as census records show them having a domestic servant in the house at Bridge of Don, but they could not afford to send Thomas to university when he completed his schooling – his school records suggested he should have gone into tertiary education.

Instead he got a job as a trainee clerk with the Hong Kong-based Jardine Matheson trading company. He showed a good head for business from the outset and at the age of 19 the company moved him to Shanghai in China.

From there Glover visited Japan for the first time in 1857 and two years later he was able to set up his own company trading in green tea from Nagasaki – the only port open to foreigners during that period of the Tokugawa Shogunate which then ruled Japan, with its officer class being the Samurai.

Until Commodore Robert Perry of the US Navy achieved a treaty with Japan’s rulers in 1858, any foreigner entering the country or any Japanese person attempting to leave could theoretically be put to death.

Glover arrived in Japan at a time of considerable political disturbance in the country, with occasional civil wars between powerful warring clans. He realised that modern weapons from the West could be key to who would win the wars and he made a fortune supplying all sides, enabling him to build Japan’s first substantial stone village overlooking Nagasaki Bay.

IT was there that he held court, linking up to the two most powerful clans who were rebelling against the Shogunate, the Chosus and Satsumas. Being a Scot, Glover knew the importance of clannishness and over the years he would network assiduously with various clan leaderships.

Through his connections with Jardine Matheson, he arranged for two groups of young men from these two clans, future engineers and builders, to visit Britain, where they were known as the Chosus Five and the Satsuma Eighteen. They were reportedly most astonished by Glasgow and Clydeside’s heavy engineering and shipbuilding.

Glover played an increasingly influential role both as an arms dealer and industrialist, supplying arms and warships to the faction that wanted the Shogunate destroyed and the emperor restored to full power, even though he risked imprisonment or worse by doing so.

It was a fortunate choice because eventually the Shogunate collapsed and Emperor Meiji formally restored imperial supremacy in January 1868, with Glover to the fore in supporting him. It helped that Meiji was a genuine enthusiast for political reform, trade, and developing industries, and Glover showed him what could be done.

The mitsubishi.com website describes how personal links made during the 1860s benefited both Glover and the organisation which later became Mitsubishi: “Glover forged lasting friendships with Mitsubishi founder Yataro Iwasaki and with Yataro’s brother, Yanosuke, the organisation’s second president.

“The elder Iwasaki represented the Tosa clan in Nagasaki. He was in the market for ships and armaments for his clan. And Glover was the premier broker of those items in Nagasaki.”

From that initial contact with the Iwasakis grew a deep relationship that lasted until Glover’s death. Mitsubishi.com explains: “Yataro turned frequently to his foreign friend for support and advice as Mitsubishi grew.

“Glover’s knowledge and understanding of international business was invaluable to Mitsubishi, where he was an adviser for 40 years. Glover thus contributed immensely to the industrialisation and modernisation of Japan.”

To service the increasing number of steam-driven ships in Japanese waters, in 1868 Glover established the Nagasaki shipyard which would later be part of Mitsubishi.

Earlier, in 1865, he had started to build a railway some eight miles long around the port city, and in 1868 – though the exact date is disputed – he imported from Britain the first steam locomotive in Japan, named the Iron Duke.

Glover demonstrated the steam train concept but it was left to other engineers and designers, mostly from Britain, to build Japan’s first proper railway in the 1870s. It ran from the port city of Yokohama to Tokyo, the former city of Edo, which Meiji had renamed and made his capital.

Glover’s importance to the Meiji regime was shown by the fact that he was selected to broker the deal for the new imperial navy’s first modern warships – and he looked to his native land and former home city to supply them.

Working with two of his brothers in Scotland, he commissioned the wooden-hulled steam-driven corvette Jho Sho Maru from Alexander Hall and Sons in Aberdeen.

It was launched on March 27, 1869, and was later renamed Ryujo Maru, possibly because of an incident in the shipyard in which the yard owner, James Hall, died of a heart attack.

His nephew William Hall recounted: “The ship has been an unfortunate one for us, through his anxiety for it Uncle James lost his life while assisting at putting out a fire near it and all together she has been a disagreeable job although she is a credit to Aberdeen.”

GLOVeR also commissioned the smaller Hoho Maru for the imperial navy, and the Kagoshima for the Satsuma clan, from the same Aberdeen shipyard.

The year after Ryujo Maru entered service, Glover encountered the worst problem of his life. Having realised steam ships would demand more coal, Glover invested heavily in the first mechanised coal mines in Japan – but he overstretched himself financially. In 1870 his investments collapsed and he was declared bankrupt.

Mitsubish.com records: “Glover, in partnership with the Hizen Clan, invested in developing the Takashima coal mine on an island near Nagasaki in 1868. It was the first in Japan to employ Western methods of mining. Financial troubles later forced Glover to sell his stake but he stayed on as manager for several more years. Mitsubishi acquired the mine in 1881 in the organisation’s first main diversification beyond shipping.”

That bankruptcy would have felled lesser men but Glover rebuilt his trading business and then invested in a new industry that would make him famous across Japan: brewing beer.

He established the Japan Brewing Company, taking over the assets of a defunct brewery founded in Yokohama, and built up the company vastly and successfully. It later morphed into Kirin Beer, and Kirin Lager, first brewed in 1888, remains very popular in Japan.

Glover’s personal life has been the subject of much controversy and dispute over the years, particularly his marriage to a Japanese woman divorced from a Samurai and with a very tenuous link to the opera Madama Butterfly.

His wife Tsura supposedly decorated her clothes with butterflies, and that and the Nagasaki setting was enough for some people to claim that Giacomo Puccini was inspired by Glover and Tsura to write Madama Butterfly which premiered in 1904.

READ MORE: How a Scots Suffragette geologist had a cliff on Mars named after her

The theory falls apart when you learn that Puccini was actually inspired by the 1887 story in French of Madame Chrysantheme by Pierre Loti which in turn inspired Madame Butterfly, a long short story by John Luther Long which was published in 1898 and dramatised as a play by David Belasco in 1900 as Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan.

Puccini saw a performance of the play in London that year and the result was his opera – Puccini’s male protagonist Pinkerton was also

an American.

It has been reported that Glover fathered two children with Tsura but had another four by four other women, one of the mothers being a geisha called Kaga Maki. According to one source, Glover and Tsura adopted the boy, Tomisaburo, which caused Kaga Maki to attempt suicide, creating a scandal that rocked Nagasaki society.

With Glover having loyally advised Meiji for many years, the emperor in 1908 awarded him the Order of the Rising Sun. He was the first foreigner ever to be so honoured.

His wife passed away in 1899, and Thomas Blake Glover himself died on December 16, 1911, in Tokyo, reportedly of kidney failure. He is buried in Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki.

The National: NAGASAKI, JAPAN - JULY 16: Glover House on July 16, 2015 in Nagasaki, Japan. The bungalow and gardens of Thomas Blake Glover, a Scotsman and co-founder of Mitsubishi company was registered as the UNESCO World Heritage site on July 5, 2015, as one of 23

His home in Nagasaki, Glover House (above), was just far enough away from the centre of the city to avoid destruction by America’s second nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945. Glover Garden, with the intact house, is one of Japan’s most popular tourist attractions, drawing two million visitors annually.

Mitsubishi.co records: “Mitsubishi Heavy Industries donated the mansion to the city in 1957. In further homage, the company acquired the Glover family home in Scotland and donated it to the Grampian-Japan Trust, a natural and historical preservation society.”

That is the sad part of this story. Glover House in Bridge of Don became a museum dedicated to showing aspects of Glover’s life but

it fell into disrepair and closed in 2012. Despite an extensive refurbishment costing £300,000, and plans to promote its use for study, it has not re-opened.

It seems Glover remains more honoured in Japan than here in Scotland and that’s a great pity.

Next week I will tell the stories of Richard Henry Brunton and Alexander Cameron Sim, two more of our exports to Japan.