The former Nagasaki Urakami Cathedral revealed

This book has been published very recently. It reveals striking images and its commentary is also helpful to undersdand the lost Urakami Cathedral and the faithful. The translator, Brian Burke-Gaffiney, lives in Nagasaki and works as a professor at a local university. He has extensive knowledge about Nagasaki and his English, as a matter of course, is reliable.

One of the photos shows how a vise was used to demolish the survived items of the church. It is said that the sturdy ruins gave way only reluctantly.

One photograph frames both the church in ruins and the Peace Statue completed in 1955. In 1858, the former cathedral was demolished and replaced with the new one which now stands on the hill of Urakami.

You won't regret buying the book.

Useful sites about the Glover's son

Hi there.

The ending part of the last article is collected and updated. I forgot to post the very useful and academically reliable site. The one posted from the beginning has lots of great pictures of the Glover Garden. They also help.

About Glover's son Tommy, click the following URL. I asked the author about a tiny little mistake in his article about Tommy (The man who could not take sides), which he kindly and quickly responded to and said what I pointed out was right. I felt his sincere attitude to his work and appreciated his effort. The plot number of the house Tommy lived after giving up the one on the hillside is No. 9. At one point, the article says it's 19, only a simple mistake. 

http://www.uwosh.edu/home_pages/faculty_staff/earns/tommy.html

The site below gives you precise information about the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement and people concerned.

http://www.nfs.nias.ac.jp/

Meet Glover's son

This one-storied bungalow house, standing on the hillside of Minami-yamate, part of the former Nagasaki foreign settlement, once belonged to the Glover family. Thomas Blake Glover, a young entrepreneur from Scotland, had it built for him originally as a guest house in 1863. Since then the house has stood to this day, overlooking Nagasaki Harbor.

A Japanese carpenter KOYAMA Hidenoshin was in charge. The carpenter also worked for the construction of Oura Tenshudo, the first Catholic Church built for the foreign population living in the Nagasaki foreign settlement. The church stands on the same hillside as the Glover Residence. It was completed in 1864 and dedicated in the next year to the 26 Martyrs of Japan who were crucified on the hill of Nisizaka, Nagasaki in 1597. To pay homage to the 26 martyrs who were canonized by Pius Ⅸ in 1862, the church faces in the direction of Nishizaka. This church provided the stage for an amazing history of Japanese underground Christians “discovered” after 250-year hiding. Now this beautiful Gothic church attracts so many visitors that the parishioners had another church built nearby for their practical use.

The Glover Residence is part of Glover Garden where quasi-western buildings have been preserved to show the visitors the days of Nagasaki as an exotic treaty port. It is the city’s foremost tourist attraction and the city of Nagasaki must be so eager to promote its popularity, focusing mainly on intriguing adventurous stories about the days when west met east and east met west.

A lot has been talked about T. B. Glover; how he contributed to Japan’s modernization and even the Meiji Restoration by helping the young rebels from Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa domains. In contrast, not so much was known about his son Kuraba Tomisaburo, who was born between him and his Japanese courtesan. Find the bronze bust of him at the Glover Residence, which is often left unnoticed.

Kuraba Tomisaburo, also called Tommy, lived a very difficult period of Japanese history. He was born in 1870 and died on August 26, 1945, less than three weeks after Nagasaki’s destruction by the atomic bomb.

He lived from the dawn of Japan’s modernization through its total defeat in WWⅡ. Not an easy time at all for the person who had two cultural backgrounds and was eager to serve as a liaison between the west and the east.

He revolutionized Nagasaki’s fishing industry by introducing steam trawlers for the first time in Japan.

He supervised compiling a fish atlas, a collection of 823 minute watercolor illustrations of fish and marine life caught locally, the project having lasted 21 years.

He was instrumental in inaugurating the International Club to help provide opportunities for the foreign residents and the local Japanese authorities and businessmen to get together and develop relationship.

In 1939, Tommy and his wife Waka, who was also born between a British father and a Japanese mother, were forced to sell the Glover House to Mitsubishi Co. The house stood at a vantage point commanding a clear view of the building berth where the battleship Musashi was secretly under construction.

They moved in a house at the bottom of the hill, enduring harassment from the local police. Nobody was willing to keep in touch with them. If they dared so, they would be interrogated by the police. Waka died in 1943, leaving Tommy alone.

He was in his house on August 9, 1945 when an atomic bomb exploded over the valley of Urakami, more than five kilometers north from his house. The hypocenter was three kilometers north off the intended target. Otherwise his life couldn’t have been spared. Instead, he committed suicide in his house on August 26.

His will said the family line shall be discontinued and the family assets shall be donated to the city of Nagasaki. He was 74.

If you’d like to know more about him, click the following URL. In fact, this web site is a rich repository of information about Nagasaki Foreign Settlement.

http://www.uwosh.edu/home_pages/faculty_staff/earns/tommy.html


The URL below gives you lots of pictures of the Glover Garden.
http://japan-geographic.tv/nagasaki/nagasaki-glover-park.html
 

von Siebold & special palanquin

Born into a family of doctors and professors of medicine, von Siebold studied medicine, zoology, botany, and ethnography at university of Würzburg. He also acquired knowledge of natural science from scholars he got acquainted with.

He initially practiced medicine in Germany but his keen interest in natural history urged him to venture out to the unknown world. He moved to Holland and applied for a position as a military doctor.

This position would enable him to travel to the Dutch colonies. He entered Dutch military service in 1822 and was appointed ship's doctor on the frigate Adriana on the voyage from Rotterdam to Batavia (present-day Djakarta) in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia). He arrived in Batavia in 1823.

After a short stay in Batavia, he was sent to Dejima, Nagasaki as the new resident physician and scientist. Besides being a physician, his mission was to report on Japan to improve trade practices between the two countries.

He invited to the island of Dejima Japanese scientists and physicians to lecture on Western studies and showed them surgical operations conducted in the western way, learning in return through them much about the Japanese and their customs.

Thanks to the fame he enjoyed and Nagasaki magistrate’s favor, he gained the ability to leave the trade post and examined patients in town. About a year after his arrival, the Nagasaki magistrate allowed him to buy a house in a Nagasaki suburb of Narutaki and he opened his school there, commuting about once a week.

Bright ambitious medical doctors and scientist gathered and learned in his school called Narutaki-juku. The students assisted his studies on Japan; Siebold awarded them with the certificate which certified that they had learned Western medicine, or gave them medical books and tools. He assigned the students to hand in reports on things Japan, such as whales and whaling, tea trees and tea production, dying and fabrics, salt making, and so on. That way he gathered extensive information on Japan, without leaving Nagasaki.

Now, here’s a bit about his private life. Two months after his arrival at Dejima, he began to live together with his Japanese partner Taki aged 16. He used to call his wife "Otakusa" and named a Hydrangea after her. Later this name turned out to be a synonym of the already discovered species and not an official name but this anecdote inspired many writers and still a popular topic among those who love romance.

He named a hydrangea Hydrangea otakusa Siebold et Zuccarini, officially known as H. macrophylla （Thunberg） Seringe var. macrophylla.

In 1827 Taki gave birth to their daughter, Ine. The girl eventually became the first woman obstetrician and gynecologist who learned and practiced Western medicine in Japan.

In 1826, he had a chance to accompany the trading post chief to Edo for the audience with the Tokugawa Shogun. Three members from the trading post and some dozen Japanese attendees made a large party of about 50. For every resident doctor of the trading post, the journey to Edo was a great opportunity to see real Japan, since they were normally confined to the island. And Japanese were also very curious about the foreigners, their culture and science. It should have been an exciting trip and thrilling cultural exchange for both parties.

This picture shows a special palanquin made for the Dutch delegates. The Dutch were much taller than average Japanese so the resting space for their long legs was added to the ordinary palanquin. This is displayed in one of the Dejima buildings, as a model of the procession of the Dutch delegation to Edo.

In 1828, the so-called Siebold Incident happened. Japanese maps and some other cultural items, banned from exporting, were accidentally found in Siebold’s cargo going overseas. After harsh interrogations to him and those concerned, he was expelled from Japan in 1829.

After returning to Europe, he authored Nippon in 1832, the first tome of a richly illustrated ethnographical and geographical work on Japan, followed by the Fauna Japonica and the Flora Japonica.

Many of Siebold's plants survived in Europe and spread to other countries and became familiar garden-plants. Which include Hosta, hortensia, Azalea, and the Japanese butterbur, the coltsfoot, and the Japanese larch.

He founded a museum in his home in 1837, which eventually grew into the well-known and respected National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden.

Thirty years after his expulsion from Japan, he came to Japan with his eldest son Alexander born with his European wife and met his Japanese family (wife Taki, daughter Ine, & granddaughter Taka) thanks to the shift of the times. This time he was not embraced by the new Japanese government fully and left Japan three years later.

His son Alexander, aged 13 when he first came to Japan with his father, remained in Japan and became an interpreter for the UK Legation in Japan at the age of 15. He later worked as a minister of the Japanese Legation at Rome and Berlin; then served as an official for the Japanese government for about 40 years.

Monument to Kaempfer & Thunberg

Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) was a physician and natural history scholar from Germany. He was in Nagasaki from 1690 to 1692.

Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) was a Swedish physician and botanist. C. von Linné, who established the system of plant taxonomy, was his mentor. He came to Nagasaki in 1775 and left in the next year.

Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold (1796-1866) was a German physician with extensive knowledge of natural history, more famous in Japan than in his mother land. His first stay in Nagasaki was from 1823 to 1829; the second time from 1859 to 1862.

They all were doctors for the Dutch Trading Post in Nagasaki. Besides working as doctors, they collected a wide range of information, artifacts and specimens while staying in Japan.

The photo is the monument with Latin inscriptions dedicated to the first two who came to work as doctors at Dejima, a small fun-shaped artificial island in Nagasaki Harbor completed in 1636 (not an island anymore due to urban development in the 19th to 20th century). Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold dedicated this monument to his respected predecessors in 1826 while staying on the island as a resident physician.

It was once moved out to Nagasaki Park, the oldest park in the city, but again brought back into the precincts of Dejima which has been revived due to the city’s restoration project.

Japan limited its contact with foreign countries for about 220 years from the 17th century to the 19th century. During that period, the country traded only with China, Korea, and Holland. Nagasaki was the only major gateway to merchandise, technology and information from overseas. The Dutch traders and members had to live on the island called Dejima and were not basically allowed to cross the bridge to town after their arrival.

In those days, natural history including botany, zoology, and ethnology was very popular in Europe. And new species of plants could bring about fortune. The Dutch East India Company (V. O. C) chose doctors with botanical training to accompany the trading missions to Japan. Engelbert Kaempfer was a pioneer of this type of physicians, followed by Carl Peter Thunberg and von Siebold.

The first two stayed only for a short period of time, Kaempfer for two years and Thunberg for a year. But they took advantage of their journeys from Nagasaki to Edo (present-day Tokyo) for courtesy visits to Shogun and learned about Japan and collected as many kinds of items and information as they could.

Von Siebold stayed in Japan for a longer time, first from 1823 to 1829 and later from 1859 to 1862. Since his stay was much longer than the other two, he naturally left more anecdotes of both historical significance and romantic relationship everybody would love to hear. For this another article has to be prepared.

These three made significant contributions to Japanese culture and medicine by teaching Western studies to inspired Japanese who came to Nagasaki to learn from them, whether directly or indirectly.

After they went back to Europe, they introduced yet unknown Japan in their books.

The drawing of the monument in Siebold’s Flora Japonica looks much prettier than the real thing. When he dedicated the monument, there must have been more plants covering the monument.

This wonderful web site of Kyoto University enables you to see the drawing mentioned above and the book itself. If you click a small picture of the triangular monument, you also get the explanation panel next to the monument. Hope you enjoy this site and don’t forget to say thanks to Kyoto Univ.

http://edb.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/exhibit-e/b01/b01cont.html

 

Half-blasted Torii gate

There used to be four Torii gates on the approach to the Shinto shrine called Sun-noh Jinja. In this plaque is seen the first Torii. If you take a careful look at the image, however, you see another one, half of the second Torii, stand in the back. This half-blasted gate is seen through the intact gate.

Cylinder must be resistant to blast; cylindrical chimneys and poles loomed after the atomic blast both in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The half-remaining gate standing with one pillar is better-known than the first one which was bigger and intact but was lost in a traffic accident in 1962. In those days, people didn’t regard highly preserving a-bombed artifacts and the ruined pillar simply went missing.

The existing one-pillared Torii was 800 meters southeast from the hypocenter of the A-bombing. The item on top of the pillar got twisted due to the blast and the stone surface of the Torii was affected by the extraordinary heat, some of the inscribed characters becoming illegible.

My suggestion is:
First take a look at this plaque;
Then go take a closer look at the half-blasted gate;
Still go ahead along the path, seeing the rubble of the half-blasted gate lying there, then turn left;
You’ll see a pair of camphor trees with rich foliage and canopies of green leaves.

These old trees, possibly 500 to 600 years old, are survivors as well. They lost one-third of the trunks and looked dead for a few years after the bombing but recovered and have survived to this day.

First hypocenter cenotaph of Nagasaki

The Special Committee for the Investigation of A-bomb Damages sent by the Japanese government used a part of a ruined slate chimney on the Atomic Desert as the first hypocenter cenotaph. What was written on it read “爆心” and “Centre,” meaning the hypocenter.

At the altitude of 500 meters above the hypocenter, the plutonium type a-bomb exploded. The plutonium bomb used at Nagasaki was higher yield that the uranium Hiroshima bomb, but the hilly terrain of Nagasaki and actual hypocenter off the intended target by 3km to the north prevented greater destruction and the operation resulted in lower casualties than would have been otherwise, as most of the blast was confined in the Urakami valley, where many of the faithful Christians lived. They persevered and kept their faith in secret when their religion was outlawed by the central authority during the long Edo period.

The second cenotaph was only an arrow pointing the hypocenter. The third was wooden, which stood on a small artificial mound. The fourth, built in 1956, was a triangular prism made of serpentine rock. Then finally, in 1968, it was improved to a present one whose surface was tiled with black granite because the serpentine rock weathered and peeled.

However, this black prism doesn’t look solemn enough. To me, it looks too cheap. But the worst was avoided thanks to the citizens’ objection to the city’s proposal of replacing it with a gigantic Mother and Child statue. This rather distasteful statue stands some dozen meters away from the black prism, installed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the A-bombing on Nagasaki. I don’t know who in the city loved this idea of having a gigantic idol in the public space, even humongous, by which I mean the man’s statue in Nagasaki Peace Park, though it’s a friendly-looking park where my favorite artwork, the Cloak of Peace, among others, is dedicated.

Note: The artists of the Peace Statue and the Mother & Child must have been talented and devoted to their task. No doubt they wished for ever-lasting peace while they were working on their statues.