Glover Garden

When Japan opened to the world in the 1850s, several visionary Western entrepreneurs came to the archipelago to develop international trade. Nagasaki, as one of the very few Japanese ports available during the country’s isolationist sakoku period, has been a cosmopolitan access ever since. Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover (1838 – 1911) arrived in the city in 1859, aiming at importing Japanese green tea in Europe. A few years later, he founded his company and his business thrived, especially in the industrial and mining industries that were modernizing under Western influence.

Definitely based in Nagasaki, Glover settled in 1863 on a small hill with a nice panoramic view on the port, in the Minami-Yamate area where foreign residents lived. Inspired from his European origins, his house named in English Glover Residence, is the first Western-style house built in the city. It is now renowned as the oldest Western-style villa in Japan, and it celebrated its 160th anniversary in 2023. The occasion called for renovation works that took 3 years, between 2019 and 2021. Roofing and foundations have been reinforced and updated to the current seismic standards. As it was standing near a big Japanese pine tree in its early days, the building was nicknamed "Ipponmatsu House".

District of the former colonial fortunes

In the 1970s, Glover Garden Park was created as a sanctuary for the former properties of Nagasaki’s foreign settlements, built between the end of the Edo period (1603 - 1868) and up to the middle of the Meiji Era (1868 – 1912). The Glover Residence as well as the 2 neighboring villas of the Ringer and Alt families thus became assured to be preserved against destruction. The Minami-Yamate hill is also home to 6 other smaller buildings, all of Western-style and collected from the surroundings.

An open-air museum of Western-style colonial architecture of the 2nd half of the 19th century in Japan, Glover Garden includes 9 houses that witnessed the lifestyles of the former foreign industrial families and their Japanese associates. For example:

• The Former Mitsubishi Shipyard No.2 Dock House, the 1rst house at the entrance of the site, located at the highest point of the park;
• The Former Walker House, that belonged to a British captain, and whose exhibition has been renewed in March 2023;
• The Former Residence of the Head of Nagasaki District Court; and,
• The Former Jiyūtei Restaurant, by Jokichi Kusano who was the 1rst Japanese chef of a Western restaurant.

Natural and historical observatory on the port

The tour of the park starts from its top, that can be reached thanks to an elevator, the Glover Sky Road, completed in 2002 and that moves diagonally from the exit of the Ishibashi tramway station. Another entrance, however, is located near the Oura Catholic church at the foot of the hill. The walk gradually goes down the hill to the seaside and its invigorating air.

Glover Garden opens at night on the evenings before holidays, and is a place enjoyed by the locals for its romantic night panorama on the lights of Nagasaki port. The venue can also be privatized for events like weddings or birthday parties. The old-fashioned Western-style surrounding has an exotic flare for the Japanese, who also enjoy donning old-times costumes for touristic and retro photo shootings.

The walking courses ends at the Nagasaki Traditional Performing Art Center, where are displayed, among other things, ship-shaped floats of the famous Kunchi Matsuri festival, an event taking place each year on October 9 in the streets of the city center, around Suwa-jinja shrine.