Japan Guide
Kyūshū
Glover Garden
Glover Garden, or Guraba-en is named after the bluff's most colourful and illustrious resident, Thomas Glover. Despite the crowds and piped music, the garden's seven late-nineteenth-century, European-style buildings are surprisingly interesting, mostly for the life stories of their pioneering inhabitants. The houses are typically colonial, with wide verandahs and louvred shutters, while their high-ceilinged, spacious rooms contain odds and ends of furniture and evocative family photos. The best approach is to start at the top – there are moving walkways up the hill – and work down, visiting at least the four houses recommended below.
Thomas built the bungalow now known as Glover House in 1863, where he lived with his wife Tsuru, a f ormer geisha, and his son from an earlier liaison, Tomisaburo. After his father's death, Tomisaburo was a valued member of both the Japanese and foreign business communities, but as Japan slid towards war in the mid-1930s his companies were closed and Tomisaburo came under suspicion as a potential spy. Forced to move out of Glover House, with its bird's-eye view of the harbour, and kept under virtual house arrest, he committed suicide two weeks after the atomic bomb flashed above Nagasaki. Opening time: Daily: April 27 to May 7 & July 15 to Oct 9 8am–9.30pm; May 8– July 14 & Oct 10 to April 26 8am–6pmPrice: ¥600