This image is the cover for the book Scottish Samurai

Scottish Samurai

The singular life of the nineteenth-century Scottish merchant who brought the West to Japan is illuminated in this fascinating biography: “This is a great story” (Financial Times).

In Scottish Samurai, biographer Alexander McKay chronicles Thomas Blake Glover’s influential life in the East. Glover arrived in Nagasaki in 1859, just as Japan was opening to the West. Within a few years, he had played a crucial part in the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate, providing the rebels with modern arms and war-winning, Scottish-designed warships. Bankruptcy by the age of thirty was barely a setback for Glover, who went on to become a pivotal figure in the rapidly expanding Mitsubishi empire, founding shipyards and breweries.

As energetic in his love-life as in business and politics, Glover had a string of Japanese mistresses, one of whom inspired Puccini’s Madam Butterfly. This “Scottish Samurai” became an adviser to the Japanese government; he also arranged for many Japanese to visit Britain and see the wonders of the Industrial Revolution, a lesson they enthusiastically brought back home. Today, Glover is regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Japanese economic miracle.

Alexander McKay

Alexander McKay, as well as giving occasional talks on Thomas Blake Glover (he was also an adviser to a BBC Great Explorers documentary about him), and writing articles on Japan, continues to struggle with an account of his life offshore. He spent around thirty years in the oil industry, much of the time overseas but also more than a decade in the North Sea, and was traumatized by some horrific incidents. He still suffers from nightmares and is trying to exorcise these by writing about them.The father of two adult daughters and grandfather of three, he lives in Edinburgh with his Japanese wife of forty years.

Canongate Books