グラバー園. March 1985
I left my heart in Nagasaki...
Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco (a part of mine, too), but I bet he never visited Nagasaki. The city is one of those places where I arrived and loved it immediately. Maybe because it was one small corner of Japan that was just a little less "Japanese" than the rest of the country? Most definitely I loved its setting - almost all Japanese cities are built on the very scarce flat land in that country with few exceptions (Kobe and Hakodate to be exact, and they BOTH are like smaller versions of Nagasaki with similar histories!) Nagasaki, like Tony Bennett's San Francisco, is built into the hills and spills into lovely Nagasaki Bay. No "little cable cars", but from the moment I set eyes on it, I fell for the city.
My favorite place? Glover Garden (Gurabāen).
Glover Garden is a park in Nagasaki, Japan, built for Thomas Blake Glover, a Scottish merchant who contributed to the modernization of Japan in shipbuilding, coal mining, and other fields. In it stands the Glover Residence, the oldest Western-style house surviving in Japan and Nagasaki's foremost tourist attraction.
It is located on the Minamiyamate hillside overlooking Nagasaki harbor. It was built by Hidenoshin Koyama of Amakusa island and completed in 1863. It has been designated as an Important Cultural Asset. As the house and its surroundings are reminiscent of Puccini's opera, it is also known as the "Madame Butterfly House." Statues of Puccini and diva Miura Tamaki, famed for her role as Cio-Cio-san, stand in the park near the house. This house was also the venue of Glover's meetings with rebel samurai, particularly from the Chōshū and Satsuma domains.
(Wikipedia)
Thomas Blake Glover, I loved your house and its view over Nagasaki. I loved the whole history of the city with its ancient crypto-Christian community, its REAL Chinatown (the only one in Japan until Yokohama developed one years later), and its unique status as being the sole window to the outside world for centuries. Japan was a hermit kingdom for many years until the colonial powers came rapping at her door. Gurabā-san was one lucky Scotsman to live in that house and see a Japan that was forever to change once she finally opened her doors to the rest of the world.
I hope to make it back to Nagasaki one day and when I do, I will definitely make time to hang out in Glover Garden.