The Last British Consul

When Ferdinand C. Greatrex took over for Montague B.T. Paske-Smith in December 1927, he probably never imagined that he would remain at the post of British consul in Nagasaki longer than any of his predecessors or, even less, that he would be the last in the long series of British consuls dating back to the opening of Japan’s doors in 1859.

Born in London in 1884, Greatrex had passed the competitive examination to the Japan Consular Service in 1906 at the young age of 18.  He rose through the ranks over the following years, starting as a student interpreter in Tokyo and serving as an assistant and vice-consul in various ports of Japan, Korea and the Philippines.  

As acting consul in Shimonoseki, he oversaw the closure of the British consulate in that port in 1922 and the transfer of diplomatic duties to a consular agent.  His next posting was Hakodate, where again the duty of downgrading the consulate to a branch of the Yokohama British Consulate fell on his shoulders.  Although scheduled to assume the position of consul at Tamsui, Formosa (Taiwan), he was appointed instead to succeed Montague B.T. Paske-Smith in Nagasaki in late 1927. 

Ferdinand C. Greatrex as a young diplomat in Japan. 

In the autumn of 1931, the British Foreign Office aired a proposal to close the Nagasaki consulate as well.  The ambassador to Tokyo, Sir Francis O. Lindley, informed Ferdinand C. Greatrex that he had been asked to submit his views on the abolition of the consulate because “it is the feeling of the Foreign Office that there is not actually sufficient work at Nagasaki to require the presence of a salaried officer."

Greatrex responded on October 18 and 29 with long letters outlining the situation in the Nagasaki district, which included all of Kyushu and the areas formerly under the jurisdiction of the Shimonoseki consulate.  He pointed out that the market for real estate in Nagasaki was extremely depressed and that the sale of the consular buildings could not be expected to fetch any significant sum, and he predicted that, in any case, “all classes of Japanese set great store by the historical associations of this place with foreign countries, and the first suggestion of our withdrawal will, I am sure, cause a much greater outcry than that heard in the case of Hakodate or Shimonoseki."

In the end, the Foreign Office decided to maintain the status quo in Nagasaki despite the decline in the city as an international port and the deterioration of British-Japanese relations in the late 1930s.  As a result, Ferdinand C. Greatrex was still at his desk -- like a captain refusing to abandon the helm of a sinking ship -- when the news of the Pearl Harbor attack reached Nagasaki on December 8, 1941.  Japanese military police immediately surrounded the consulate and placed Greatrex and his wife Margaret under house arrest.

The two were later confined in a school on the outskirts of Nagasaki along with a few intrepid missionaries, elderly men with Japanese wives, and other enemy nationals who for whatever reason had ignored the injunctions to leave Japan.  They were finally allowed to leave the city in July 1942 and to board an exchange ship at Yokohama for repatriation to England.

The activities of Ferdinand C. Greatrex as Nagasaki's last British consul are largely forgotten, but his name lives on in the field of botany, an academic undertaking he pursued in parallel to his long career in the Japan Consular Service.  Greatrex made frequent trips to the countryside near Nagasaki to identify and record unusual plants, and one rare species of violet that he discovered at Unzen was even named in his honor: Viola greatrexii Nakai & Maek.

The Former Glover House: Truth and Lies

The former house of Scottish merchant Thomas B. Glover is a symbol of Nagasaki's colorful history of international exchange and the city's most popular tourist destination.  It is also the oldest Western-style building in Japan, an "Important Cultural Asset" designated by the Japanese government, and currently a tentative World Heritage site.  The official designations, however, place emphasis on the architectural significance of the building, not the life and work of Thomas B. Glover or the dramatic story of his family.

After acquiring the property in 1957, Nagasaki City exploited the building as the "Madame Butterfly House," a whimsical nickname conjured up by the American Occupation personnel who had inhabited the house during the immediate postwar period.  To this day, Japanese people tend to draw a connection between the former Glover house and the famous opera, without any reference to historical facts. 

The Former Glover House is preserved at its original location overlooking Nagasaki Harbor

The success of the house as a tourist attraction was so outstanding (as many as two million visitors a year) that no one thought it necessary to change the style of presentation.  Still, if Nagasaki City is serious about applying for World Heritage status, it is going to have to prepare for hard questions from scholars in the field of cultural history as well as architecture.  The following are three points that I think demand immediate attention and correction. 

1. The Madame Butterfly Connection

As mentioned above, the nickname “Madame Butterfly House” was first applied by the American Occupation personnel who requisitioned the house at the time of arrival in Nagasaki in 1945 and marveled at its eclectic architectural style and panoramic view over Nagasaki Harbor.  There is nothing in any primary source or prewar document to suggest a connection between Thomas Glover and the opera, aside from the fact that the Scotsman was married, albeit happily, to a Japanese woman.   The nickname was obviously a sham, but it persisted after the departure of the Occupation forces because it gave Nagasaki City a way to bolster the postwar economy through tourism.  Later, faced with growing criticism, the city adopted fuzzy but less controversial monikers like "Memorial Place of Madame Butterfly" and "Place Connected with Madame Butterfly” that still pop up today in displays and promotional materials.

This postcard from the early 1960s does not even mention the name Glover

2. The Identification of Rooms

The floor plan of the Glover House in official use today (see below) was compiled at the time of a 1966 restoration and included in the lengthy resulting report.  The identification of rooms -- dining room, bedroom, parlor, etc. -- was based on conjecture by the Japanese experts conducting the restoration, not on any documents or photographs from the Glover family.  Here are a few questions.  If room #11 is the guest bedroom, then where was the master bedroom?  Although identified on the floor plan as a bedroom, room #6 is currently part of a wide passageway cutting through the building for the convenience of tourists.  Isn't it reasonable to assume that room #6 was the "middle bedroom" mentioned by Glover's son Kuraba Tomisaburo in a 1908 letter to his father, and that the room that Kuraba referred to as "your bedroom" was room #11, that is, the master bedroom?  Also, why did the experts assume that room #19, directly beside the kitchen, was the "wife's room?"  

3. The "Hidden Room"

This is one of the favorite spots among Japanese tourists trudging through the former Glover house.  Pamphlets, signs and other media give the impression that the attic above the servants' room (#23 on the floor plan) was a "hidden room" where Thomas Glover harbored young samurai rebels.  This conjecture is unlikely for two reasons: 1) the building was added later and so did not exist when samurai rebels were looking to Thomas Glover for assistance; and 2) even if the building had existed, the Glover house was in the foreign settlement and so off-limits to Japanese police and other authorities.  There would have been no need to hide in a cramped attic.  And even if there had been an attack or some other event that compelled the samurai rebels to hide in the attic, the incident would certainly have made headlines in newspapers and consular reports -- of which there are none.  

The following is my guess, for the record.  The municipal authorities who acquired the house in 1957 were surprised to find an attic accessible only by ladder and to note that it had a Japanese-style fusuma door (when everything else in the house was European style).  One of them said, "It looks like a Japanese person used the attic."  Someone continued the line of thought by saying, "Maybe Sakamoto Ryoma or some other samurai rebel hid here."  And, voila, we still have the "hidden room" more than half a century later.

      

Charles C. Erichsen: Gone but not Forgotten

Nagasaki is home to Japan's oldest and most diverse international cemeteries.  All told, several thousand foreigners are buried here, from Chinese merchants who ended their journey in 17th-century Nagasaki to British retirees who chose to stay with their Japanese wives during World War II and died of old age in the postwar period.

When Lane Earns and I put together the book Across the Gulf of Time: The International Cemeteries of Nagasaki (Nagasaki Bunkensha, 1993), our research was hampered by a lack of sources.  In fact, we relied mainly on gravestone inscriptions and obituaries from the English-language newspapers published in Nagasaki from 1861 to 1928, with inevitable gaps and omissions.  We also had to leave out the hundreds of people buried in the Chinese and Russian cemeteries and to gloss over periods not covered by the newspapers.  As a result we have been constantly on the lookout for further information, especially that provided by descendants who happen to notice the names of relatives in the above book or on our website.  The following is a report on one such event.  

I recently received an inquiry regarding Charles C. Erichsen, a British-Danish traveler who died in Nagasaki in 1883 at the tender age of 19.  The short obituary published in the English-language newspaper The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express states simply that he died on board the "Seine," a steamship operated by the "Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Co."  The rather opulent gravestone erected at Oura International Cemetery suggests a wealthy background, but the inscription provides no further clues.

Charles C. Erichsen's gravestone (right) at Oura International Cemetery

However, the information provided by the writer of the above inquiry revealed that Erichsen was the younger brother of Nelly Erichsen (1862-1918), a British-Danish artist and illustrator who studied at the Royal Academy of Art in the 1880s and worked with a number of publishing firms including J.M. Dent and Macmillan.  His father was Herman Gustav Erichsen, a native of Denmark who had emigrated to England as a young man and later invested in the formation of the Great Northern Telegraph Company, going on to become the company’s representative in England.  The Great Northern Telegraph Company built an international telegraph network, connecting England, Russia and Scandinavia by means of undersea cables and establishing an extension company that laid the first cables connecting Nagasaki with Vladivostok, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Charles C. Erichsen was probably visiting Nagasaki as a company representative and met an untimely death due to a sudden illness.  His identify and family connections went unknown until now, 131 years since his burial in the Oura International Cemetery.

A Hard Day's Labour, by Nelly Erichsen.

Whence the Kirin?

The kirin (qilin) is a mythical animal of Chinese origin, half horse and half dragon, a harbinger of good fortune and world harmony said to appear in conjunction with the arrival and death of great personages.  Mention of it can be traced back in literature and art to the 5th century BCE.  The figure and the meaning attached to it probably reached Japan on one of the ships carrying news of Chinese Buddhism, architecture and kanji written script about a millennium later. 

The kirin engraved on a transom at the Nishihonganji Head Temple in Kyoto. 

Illustration of a kirin in the notes of German physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who served as chief surgeon at the Dutch East India Company factory on Dejima in Nagasaki from 1690 to 1692. 

In present-day Japan, however, the kirin is better known for the animal portrayed on the labels of Kirin Beer Company products than for any traditional artistic representation.  Kirin Beer also has a rather garbled Nagasaki connection, discussed below.

      

The Japan Brewery Company, predecessor of Kirin Beer Company, was founded in Yokohama in 1885 and began production of its signature "Kirin Beer" in 1888.  The main mover was Scottish entrepreneur Thomas B. Glover (1838-1911), whose famous house is preserved today in Nagasaki's Glover Garden.  Glover exercised his considerable entrepreneurial skills in scouting German brewmasters, drumming up investments from both foreign and Japanese residents, and turning beer into a beverage as popular as sake and shochu in Japanese drinking establishments.  

The first label used by the Japan Brewery Company after its inception in 1885 featured an unidentified animal dancing in front of a rising sun.  Whether or not this was intended to look like a kirin is unclear.  

A new illustration appeared in 1889 and remains in use to this day.  The Japan Brewery Company was disbanded in 1907 and renamed "Kirin Brewery Company," an organization registered in Japan without the assistance of foreigners and based entirely on Japanese capital.

How Thomas Glover and his colleagues came up with the kirin to serve as a company symbol, however, remains a mystery.  Nothing can be found in company records to shed light on the question.  The original label illustration and related documents have also been lost, apparently in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.   All we have, therefore, is conjecture.

One unconfirmed theory states that the bushy mustache shown on the animal of the label -- a feature absent in illustrations of the traditional kirin -- was inspired by Glover's trademark mustache and was added as an expression of respect.  But even if that is true, it does not answer the fundamental question as to why and under what circumstances the kirin was chosen as a company symbol.

Another theory has it that the pair of stone komainu (guardian dogs) currently on display in the former Glover House in Nagasaki served as models.  In fact the sign beside the statues states in rather definite terms that this is so.  Several years ago your writer was asked to translate the sign.  I stealthily added the word "perhaps" to the English text because I suspected, correctly as it would turn out, that there is no proof for the supposed connection between the statues and the famous beer.  In fact, not only is there nothing to show that Glover referred to the statues in choosing a logo for his beer, there is no record as to how the statues ended up in his house in the first place.  Someone just threw out a guess, and it stuck to the wall.

The guardian dogs in the sunroom at the former Glover House, with Nagasaki Harbor and Mt. Inasa in the background.   The Japanese explanation board claims that the statues inspired Thomas Glover to choose the kirin as a logo for his new beer, quite a leap of logic considering that the guardian dog and the kirin are entirely different entities.     

So, let's join in the guessing game.  Fuller’s Brewery, the producer of London Pride and other popular British brands, has been operating in the Chiswick suburb of West London since 1845.  The company emblem is the griffin, a legendary creature of European origin similar to the kirin in use and meaning but combining a lion with an eagle instead of a dragon with a horse.  Perhaps Thomas Glover or one of his British colleagues 1) remembered the griffin when looking around for a name, 2) heard from Japanese friends that Japan and China had something remarkably similar, and 3) decided to use the kirin as a trademark.  This is pure conjecture, but it seems far more plausible than the guardian dogs. 

The insignia of Fuller's Brewery, showing the griffin symbol.

Peace Promotion?

The municipal government of Nagasaki regularly calls for the "abolition of nuclear weapons" and the "promotion of lasting world peace" in one sentence.  The mayor of Nagasaki delivers a public "Peace Declaration" every year on the August 9 anniversary of the atomic bombing and, with minor adjustments, trots out the same message each time, namely the assertion that world peace cannot be achieved as long as nuclear weapons exist.

Once a year, several Nagasaki high school students are nominated "Peace Messengers" and dispatched to the United States and other countries.  The purpose is to convey information about the horror of the atomic bombing; the reward is praise at home for valiant "peace activities."  Whenever I read the news, I imagine the naive teenagers crying in their hotel rooms at night after facing questions on topics such as Pearl Harbor, Korean comfort women and the Bataan Death March -- not to mention factors hindering global security such as economic disparity, environmental degradation and religious conflict -- about which of course they know little if anything.

Ironically, the current Japanese government seems to regard nuclear weapons as necessary for peace.   Japanese officials recently refused to approve a joint statement aired at the second session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in Geneva.  The explanation was that Japan’s national security is protected under the American nuclear umbrella, making it impossible to advocate statements like, "It is in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances."  In other words, Japan needs American nuclear weapons to keep China and North Korea at bay and to maintain peace in the region.  I wonder how the mayor of Nagasaki intends to deal with this in his next “Peace Declaration."

Another reason to question Nagasaki City's motivation in waving the peace placard is the conflict of interest represented by tourism.  Just as the "Peace Dome" is Hiroshima's hottest attraction, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum is second only to the Glover Garden theme park as Nagasaki's most popular tourist destination. Statistics published by Nagasaki City show that 644,391 and 933,660 people visited the two facilities, respectively, during the year 2012.  The restored Dutch East India Company Factory on Dejima came in a distant third at 393,807 visitors.

Despite the inclusion of the name on the above list of tourist facilities -- and despite the enormous revenue gained from admission fees -- Nagasaki City insists that the museum's mission is to promote peace, not to attract tourists.  However, the tourist stamp from the early postwar years shown below suggests that tourism and "peace promotion" have always been two sides of the same coin.

Tourist stamp from the 1950s.  The stamp has the characters meaning "Nagasaki Tourist Memento" on the bottom with an image of the atomic bomb mushroom cloud rising above the city and the popular tourist attractions Oura Catholic Church and Sofukuji Temple (left) shown below. 
 ]

The government led by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has raised eyebrows in recent weeks for its increasingly nationalistic rhetoric and its efforts to revise the Japanese constitution, particularly Article Nine prohibiting acts of war by the state.  The prime minister has also been busy during trips abroad trying to sell nuclear reactors to developing countries.  After the Pandora's Box of Fukushima and all the problems it unleashed -- as well as the scourge of radiation generated by the 1945 atomic bombings -- shouldn't Japan be the world's foremost proponent of alternative energy?

To conclude, one more peace-related photograph: 

The official name of the pachinko (pinball gambling) parlor on the corner of Nagasaki's main downtown intersection is "Peace Park."  No one seems to find this odd or inappropriate, even though the city has a famous park of the same name located near the atomic bomb hypocenter, a sacrosanct space supposedly designed to appeal to the world about the importance of "peace."