Scottish Samurai. Alexander McKay
main problems were bakufu inspired – they were doing all they could to hamper trade and discourage foreigners. Within weeks of his arrival Glover could have begun to develop a resentment against the shogun, the recognised leader of the government. The Treasury Guild officials sent from Edo had made it difficult for Westerners to obtain local currency. In the beginning the only money available was a kind of note made from a slab of bamboo with a Japanese figure on one side and an equivalent in Dutch florins on the other. These slabs were withdrawn and replaced regularly. The foreigners could not always get their hands on the bamboo money to buy the silk and other goods they could export profitably. The Japanese traders were not allowed to accept the only international currency of the day in the Far East – Mexican silver dollars. The purity of the Mexican silver dollar was recognised and unquestioned all over the world, but when approached to exchange their bamboo money the Japanese made hand signs to indicate their heads being cut off or of being whipped by a split bamboo – standard and well-used forms of punishment on the China coast.
Another early problem for the Scotsmen was communication with the locals – Dutch was virtually the only foreign language spoken by the Japanese. When the first British Consul in Nagasaki was negotiating with Japanese officials for land in June 1859 he required a Dutch interpreter.
Dispatching the goods they could buy was not easy and they had to push hard to organise shipments. The Nagasaki tides allowed only three hours a day for loading and unloading cargo. The goods were moved in open boats which often overturned or were soaked in rainstorms. Much was lost through stealing. MacKenzie was experienced and shrewd enough to recoup some of these losses by claiming against the Japanese Treasury Guild.
Most serious of all was the problem of the anti-foreign fanatics. Following the murders of two Russian seamen in the same month of Glover’s arrival, the safety of foreigners in Japan became a major issue. On 6 November a British national was attacked and killed by samurai outside Jardine, Matheson’s office doorway in Yokohama. A lantern had been pushed into the face of the victim while he was run through from behind.
Yokohama’s British Consul, F. Howard Vyse, in reaction to this killing notified all British subjects to remain armed. But the Consul-General, Alcock, now based in his Edo Legation, withdrew this notice as being over-reaction. He told Vyse that the Japanese were surprisingly tolerant in the face of foreign provocation.
Alcock’s view may well have been true of the vast majority of Japanese – but it was certainly not true of some of the samurai who were not hiding their feelings towards the newcomers.
Perhaps Alcock quickly regretted his own advice. Soon after he was jostled by some samurai while out riding, forcing him to write to London and plead for, among other things, a Royal Navy warship to be assigned to protect the British citizens resident in Japan.
The residents of Yokohama were taking the brunt of the anti-foreign feeling but Nagasaki did not escape entirely. The British Consul, George Morrison, complained in December 1859 of the destruction by fire of two foreign-owned warehouses. The Japanese had offered no help to put out these fires but had saved, it was claimed, the adjacent property owned by a Japanese clan lord. It was the third fire of that year in the foreign quarter.
Yet despite all these difficulties and dangers, more than fifty British cargo ships alone had arrived in Nagasaki in 1859 and Jardine, Matheson, and others, were convinced that Japan would prove profitable in the end. MacKenzie and Glover wanted to develop, in particular, the export of high-quality silk. This was potentially a very big money-spinner but was desperately slow to pick up after MacKenzie’s bonanza of the early months. Most of their problems came from the constant interference in trade of an increasingly unhappy bakufu.
Perhaps the Japanese had good reason to be suspicious of the newly arrived ketojin. With the sudden influx of hundreds of foreign seamen in Nagasaki – and these seamen would have been the roughest in the business – trouble was inevitable. They roamed the streets of Maruyama looking for women and in many cases also for an excuse to fight with the locals.
The British and Americans had both established Consulates in Nagasaki in 1859. The British employed a full-time career diplomat, George Morrison, who had taken over when C. Pemberton Hodgson and his acerbic wife moved to Hokkaido in the late summer of that year. The American Consul was a part-time job, filled normally by an American citizen/trader in the port. John G. Walsh was Nagasaki’s first US Consul. Incredibly it would seem, Kenneth Ross MacKenzie was temporarily serving as Nagasaki’s French Consul at this time. The story behind MacKenzie’s appointment is not known. Certainly it was not uncommon for a trader to act as Consul for his own country. But for a major power such as France to appoint a Scot as Consul was not usual, even as a temporary measure. The Consuls of the various nations had to deal with many of the cases of violence involving sailors on leave in the port as well as normal diplomatic business.
Very early in 1860 the American Consul, Walsh, was writing to his Secretary of State in Washington regarding compensation for an injury done to a Japanese by a petty officer from the US steamer Mississippi. Walsh was aware that it was not normal for the Consulate to pay such expenses but that he had examined the case and felt it proper for the Consulate to compensate the victim in this particular 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.