Glover Garden
park in Nagasaki
Glover Garden (グラバー園, Gurabāen) 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.
Glover Residence
The Glover Residence is noted for its blend of Western and Japanese elements and is an example of treaty port building. This type of architecture closely resembles one-story bungalows used by foreigners in Hong Kong or Shanghai and imported to Japan by British traders. Rather than following contemporary Victorian styles, this type of building more closely reflects the Georgian aesthetic popular in Britain during the previous generation.
The public source identifies “Glover Garden” as park in Nagasaki. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Glover, Garden and park.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Glover Garden”, the useful work is to connect “park in Nagasaki” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 22, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q63465. VIAF identifies the subject as 313300981. Authority coordinates are 32.734, 129.869. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1863.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
- Historic place names
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Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.
Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Glover Garden” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.