Glover House and Office

Thomas B. Glover, a Scottish merchant, came to Japan in 1859 when he was 21 years old as Jardine Matheson's agent. In 1861 he established the Glover Trading Company (Guraba Shokai) and built the Glover House and Office in Nagasaki's Foreign Settlement on a top of the hill overlooking Nagasaki Ironworks in 1863. It was Glover's base for his business operation in Japan and a hub for technology information exchange. He supplied machinery, equipment, ships, arms and weapons to Samurai of Choshu, Satsuma and Tosa clans, who eventually toppled the Tokugawa Shogunate. He became the facilitator of industrialization. He played a critical role during Japan's emergent period of industrialization. Glover was a large investor in Kosuge Slip Dock in joint venture of the Satsuma students. He participated in the establishment of businesses that would become pillars of Mitsubishi's early growth and diversification, including Nagasaki Shipyard and the first Western mechanized mining of a Japanese coal field, at Takashima in 1869.
Construction illustrates a fusion of British colonial style with traditional Japanese structural craftsmanship and landscaping, overlooking Nagasaki Harbour and Shipyard (1863).It is the oldest surviving wooden Western-style house in Japan, and the former guesthouse and business hub of pioneer foreign industrial entrepreneur (Scottish, Thomas Glover).