instance. The result of the attack on the Japanese was horrific – the loss of both eyes.
Incidents like this would not have helped in developing trust in those very early days and would have been played on by the fanatics. And, of course, the rules of the Treaty did not allow the ‘uncivilised’ Japanese to administer Japanese law on the foreigners. There was some justification for this. Japanese law allowed summary executions and quite horrific tortures – so the agreement was that Consular Courts would handle foreigners charged with an offence in Japan. This became a particularly sore point with the fiercely proud Japanese and these extra-territoriality laws would remain a festering grievance for many years.
William Keswick was Jardine, Matheson’s agent in Yokohama and was having a lot more luck than MacKenzie and Glover in Nagasaki at this time. Keswick had apparently picked up a little Japanese and could communicate directly to a certain extent with the locals. Educated in Edinburgh, Keswick in later years would become the Jardine, Matheson & Co. taipan. MacKenzie did not hesitate to use his position as French Consul to help company communications. He wrote to Jardine, Matheson in Shanghai offering to use his right as a Consul to send an overland messenger to Yokohama to pass on to Keswick any company business ‘of importance’.
But they were a good team, the older and highly experienced MacKenzie balancing the enthusiasm and optimism of the younger man from Aberdeen. MacKenzie was about the same age as Glover’s father and clearly served as his mentor. By early January 1860, Glover was confident enough to be signing his own name to the regular letters sent by them to Jardine, Matheson in Shanghai.
The foreign settlement was nearing completion in 1860 and the two Scots had to settle for a less than prominent allotment at Oura 21. Oura was a prime waterfront area on the eastern side of the harbour and a cluster of foreign buildings now began to straddle the Oura river. The complicated rules for application for land by partnerships meant that Glover and MacKenzie’s plot was at the rear, two streets back from the harbour front.
Their building would have been sparsely furnished, at least initially, as was the Japanese way. It is likely to have been built in the style of Westerners’ houses in China, with offices and perhaps a warehouse on the ground floor and living quarters above. They would have engaged local servants.
Many of the foreign arrivals in Japan at this time were struck by the differences between China and Japan. The discipline and eagerness to learn of the Japanese was startling. Everything in Japanese society was ordered. Every 5 May, for example, the population en masse began wearing their summer kimono. On 9 September winter clothing was put back on – again by everyone. Every action of the people was supervised and the shogun’s spies were everywhere and knew everything. Instant and utter obedience to Authority was expected.
Glover’s first year in Japan was spent looking for and arranging export of cargoes to the China coast. Seaweed, a delicacy in both China and Japan, and silk dominated this export trade. Imports were a problem with Jardine, Matheson feeling strongly that their expensively chartered ships should carry a full load both ways. It was essential for Glover to find Japanese markets for the goods they had to import, mainly Chinese medicines, cotton and sugar.
Until he became fluent in the language, it would have been necessary for Glover, like Keswick in Yokohama, to pick up a smattering of Japanese and use an interpreter only when required. But it is certain Glover realised even this early the importance of direct communication with the Japanese; he made up his mind to master the language.
Trading in those early days meant trudging through the mud or dust of Nagasaki to deal directly with the Japanese selling the products he could export profitably. It meant following MacKenzie and becoming familiar with the older man’s methods and with his contacts. It meant haggling with the Japanese and in the early days, at least, dealing with shopkeepers rather than merchants.
In China Glover would perhaps have been accustomed to inspect a sample of merchandise for his company before ordering a shipload for Europe. But in Japan in the beginning only frustratingly small amounts of goods could be ordered. And the Japanese merchants he did deal with in many cases had to borrow from him before they could purchase the goods they were able to sell. But clearly Glover felt there was a future for him in Japan.
It is clear, too, that during his first year he began to grasp the complicated political situation in Japan. Alone among the foreigners Glover appears to have quickly had his finger on the Japanese political pulse.
Tom Glover in 1860 was a normal, fit and healthy young man. He was tall and fair skinned, hair long and waved. His very appearance would have made him an object of curiosity to the available girls of Nagasaki most of whom had never seen a European. Another attraction would have been his generosity which is mentioned in most surviving descriptions of the man. He was reportedly ‘endowed of a fine physique and a courtly manner that captivated Japanese and foreigners – men and women alike’. It is no surprise then to find him at the end of his first year in Japan seeking and finding some feminine company.
In September 1860 he went through a form of marriage with a Japanese girl, Sono Hiranaga. It is said that Sono was the daughter of a poor samurai. This was almost certainly not the first time Tom had some kind of relationship with a Japanese girl. And it was certainly not the last, but it is the first recorded.
Little is known in detail of the marriage, but temporary marriages of convenience between lonely Western bachelors and Japanese women were then becoming common in all the newly opened Treaty ports. Quite simply there were no available Western women in these ports which were considered dangerous places in which to live.
Nagasaki, in particular, was famed for its local girls, said to be not only the prettiest in Japan, but also the easiest to live with. Glover was a resident and a gentleman and his arrangement with Sono bears no comparison with the rough-and-ready red-light trade indulged in by visiting seamen.
The usual routine for the respectable foreigner in these cases was to be taken to a certain tea-house by a go-between. These go-betweens were often Customs officials, people with whom Tom would have been in constant contact. The suggestion for taking a ‘wife’ may well have come from one of these officials. The tea-house was probably a two-storey, balconied building in Maruyama and Tom most likely crossed the ‘Hesitation’ and ‘Made-up-your-Mind’ bridges to reach it.
Inside the tea-house, Tom would have been seated on a tatami mat in the twinkling light of a paper lantern. Drinking sake from thimble-sized cups, he would have listened to the melancholy strumming of the samisen and the swish of silken kimono. These tastes, sounds and atmosphere are uniquely Japanese.
He would have viewed various pretty girls and after a while selected the one most pleasing to him. He would have promised ‘marriage’ and it was the go-between’s job to arrange this, an accepted union in Japan. A house to rent for the couple would often be part of the deal. It was normal for the girl to live with the foreigner as long as he stayed in Japan, or in some cases until he got bored or a baby was on the way. When he did decide to leave, for whatever reason, the marriage dissolved itself. There was a poignancy about these inevitably sad affairs which would in time grow into the Madam Butterfly syndrome – the faithful Japanese woman betrayed by the golden-haired scoundrel.
It was normal for the new wife, in many cases the daughter of a respectable but poor family, to stay in the house her husband provided, as was the case anyway with most Japanese wives. Glover’s wife, Sono, would not normally have taken part in the social life of the foreign community in Nagasaki. She would have remained in the company of her family or with other Japanese wives in similar circumstances when not with her husband.
Tom and Sono had a son whom they named Umekichi. He died as a baby of four months in the following year. The marriage did not last – Glover and Sono ‘divorced’, amicably it would seem,
