The winning Scottish team from the International Regatta between England, Germany and Scotland. Sim is seated on the right
While the life story of the ‘Scottish Samurai’, Thomas Blake Glover, has become well known throughout Scotland over the last 20 years, other lesser known Scottish contributors to Japan’s development have gone largely unnoticed. Most Scots are quick to raise a glass and declare ‘wha’s like us?’, but few realise that Scotland’s presence in Meiji Japan extended well beyond Glover’s modest infiuence. Japanese historian Olive Checkland, described 19th-century Scots in Japan as numerous to the point of being intriguingly conspicuous. Indeed, as the array of Scottish family names and birthplaces engraved on the tombstones of Japan’s foreign cemeteries reveal, far from being peripheral outliers, Scots were at the forefront of Japan’s modernisation. Whether it was the introduction of the latest engineering techniques (Richard Henry Brunton, Henry Dyer) or the transformation of the Japanese banking industry (Alexander Shand), one need not look hard to find the mark of Scottish modernity in Japan.