“Scottish Sojourners in Meiji Japan: A. C. Sim and James Murdoch” Darren Swanson, Informasia #3 2024

Introduction of speaker Darren Swanson originally from Scotland is  an associate lecturer at the school of   access education at CQ University's Sydney campus.  Previously he lived in the Kansai and Kobe region   for some eight years before decamping to Sydney.  He joins us tonight thanks to a recommendation   from Alex Byrne and so from Sydney Australia  please welcome Dr Darren Swanson. Take it away.   DS: Thank you and thank you for   the lovely welcoming Gaelic there as well Charles.   Dr Darren Swanson introduces his research Unfortunately I'm not a Gaelic speaker but I  can read a little bit. Okay so thank you very   much for that lovely introduction Patricia, and  I'm very honoured and looking forward to   to speaking with you all this evening about  a subject that is kind of close to my heart   because I don't often get a chance to speak  about this and really the    subject of my talk tonight is really the reason why I guess I became interested in   the Meiji period really. I had   always been interested in Japan I'm sure   like many of you um you've got your own your own  interests in Asia or Japan in particular   but I had initially just been interested  in Japan. I hadn't really known there was any   Scottish connection at all really and then  I had a conversation with an uncle of mine   who had told me that in the 19 early 1900s  that the Japanese had ordered ships from my   hometown in Aberdeen so I just found this  fascinating that Japan a country that I   really knew very little about in my late  teens had anything to do with my city. And you   know had used ships that were used in  the Russian-Japanese war and again this   war was really something that I'd never heard  of and I had to go away and and and find out find   out about because um I had never heard of it. And then once I started to look into the   the connection I had realized that that there  was a bit of Chinese Whispers there my uncle   had got his wires crossed a little bit, and then  actually those ships that Japan had ordered were   much much earlier, and the connection went  even further back. So I think some of you   will be familiar with he's often dubbed  the Scottish Samurai Thomas Blake Glover   and there's a famous book by the same name  The Scottish Samurai by Alex McKay so   I had really that was my first foray into  the history of the Meiji period when I    read this book. And of course from then on  I was completely hooked and that led me to   to go to visit Japan in my late 20s  and I taught English at Nova if anyone   is familiar with the company Nova. They died a  spectacular death about 20 years ago I think it   was when the company folded. So I worked there in Osaka for a year and then of course I   was still really very much interested in  history so I went back to finish my   master's degree in St Andrews where I did Museum  studies and then I focused my interest in   Japan and in particular Glover's family home. So  for those of you who are not familiar with Thomas   Blake Glover he was a a merchant Scottish Merchant  from Aberdeen who became very successful in Japan through his various projects.  He's often connected with Mitsubishi as being   one of the financial backers of Mitsubishi and he also was connected with the Choshu Five   and a lot of students from the  the Satsuma Clan who he funded to come over   to the UK and some of those   students studied in Scotland also. So that was   really how I I got into this field  and then I did my master's degree in    I did a study a case study of the Glovers'  family home it's been turned into a museum which   has been a spectacular failure and I don't  know really what the situation with that    house is but at the time I think during  the bubble era the the museum was   thought of as capitalizing  on the kind of Japan success and really   the people who were running the project kind  of used Mitsubishi as a bit of a cash cow to   get this Museum started. It's just really  a historic house that has really very little   connection with Glover. It was Glover's family who  lived there not Glover himself and the museum if you can call it really a museum  which it's just a restored house. It's   been restored to a fantastic level, very  nicely decorated inside to look like an 18th   uh a house from the 1800s but it doesn't really  have anything that really tangibly connects uh the   house with Glover. So it just really tells  the story of Glover. It has a tatami room and it   has a a suit of armour that was gifted  by the Mitsubishi Corp to the museum   itself, but there's not really any connection there with Glover and over   the years I think the museum has kind  of fallen into had fallen into disrepair and   I've really no idea what the situation is there  but that was... My Master's thesis was a   a critique of the bad handling of that  Museum and then I was able to get a    a MEXT scholarship that I applied for from  from Scotland and I was accepted to Kobe   University so I decided it would be a great idea  to continue my interest in the topic of   Japan somehow without really having any idea  about what I was going to study but I got the   scholarship so I decided that you know I'm just  going to have to try and make this work somehow.   And I ended up in Kobe and again really I  had very little clue about other   than Kobe it had some foreign houses so surely  there must be something that I could I   could study and I could get my teeth into. I  had really no idea other than there's a   few Ijinkan [foreign houses] in Kobe itself. So I guess[ed] there  must be some kind of foreign connection that I   could exploit. So that really brought me to   the sports club the Kobe Regatta and Athletic   Club. Now I'm not sure if any of you are familiar  with Kobe at all, but there is a a sports club   that doesn't have any it's it's not an Ijinkan  it's like a brand new building from the well brand   new from the from the 60s a building from the 60s  and it's got some of the old material from   from the original club and on the  staircase in the club was an old photograph   and in that photograph there's a photograph of three gentlemen seated with Scottish flag   insignias on their white uniforms.   And the main guy that's sitting in the   Alexander Cameron Sim in those three gentlemen his name was Sim. So  Alexander Cameron Sim. Now the name Sim comes   from the northeast of Scotland where I come from.  So immediately I saw uh that this yep so   the Glover House museum in Scotland  is different from the Glover Ipponmatsu    the Ijinkan that's in Nagasaki so it's  a separate that's Glover's actual house was in   Nagasaki and the Glover Museum in in Aberdeen the  Glover House Museum is something different so   I'm not really sure the status of that museum  at the moment. Anyway the Insignia and the   gentleman I saw with this big handlebar moustache  quite imposing looking gentleman, I saw the   name and I thought that name can only come from  from the northeast of Scotland so I I looked   into it and sure enough Alexander Cameron Sim [who] was the captain the first captain of the the   first really and only captain of the KRAC, came  from Aberlour which was a hop skip and a jump from where   I grew up. So that really drew my interest  in Kobe and got me on the path of finding   something that I could I could study for my  project my research project in Kobe   University and then I spent a couple of years  trying to trying to figure out what it was that   that I was going to research but  while I was in Kobe University I was really   a bit of an elephant in the room for the  for the Japanese studies Department at   Kobe University. They really didn't know what  to do with me and they weren't really sure or   interested in what I was trying to   articulate in terms of the foreign population.    And my time in Kobe University was really  um not a waste of time perhaps it's not really   the best way to describe it but it was   kind of fruitless and I decided to draw a   line under it. So I wasn't really going  anywhere, felt like I was treading water at Kobe   University and to cut a long story short I   put my studies on hold for a little while   and then I managed to get a scholarship to  come across to Australia, ironically where the   the Harold S. Williams collection is so the  the collection that really allowed me    to complete my PhD I very quickly found out  that the majority of the information that I   needed was in this collection in the Australian  National Library. So it actually made more   sense for me to to decamp and come to Sydney to  complete my PhD. So that's why I ended up   in Australia. So the title of my talk  this evening is uh I'm talking about two Scottish sojorners so if I in fact Scottish sojourners before  I begin getting my spelling right so that's   really what Ithe word that I could  use for these two individuals I'm   going to be talking about tonight because   they really traveled the world at a time    at a time when it was wasn't really something  that was available for the average person to   do and they really globetrotted if you  like to various locales before they ended   up in Japan in Kobe. So the two people in  question are Alexander Cameron Sim or A.C. Sim as he's affectionately known in Kobe uh and he's  often referred to as AC Sim in some of the    literature that does mention him, and then  we can see that Insignia from this famous   photograph that exists in the stairwell of  the KRAC the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club in   Kobe and the second person that I'll focus on  tonight is Professor James Murdoch. Now both   men are from the northeast of Scotland  like myself. In fact Murdoch comes from just down   the road from where I grew up, and I I think if  it hadn't been for these two individuals I'm   not really sure if I would have been I would  have kept up with my interest in Japan really.   So it's thanks to these two guys really that I find myself still interested in the history   of foreigners in during the Meiji era and  if it hadn't been for those two I'm not sure how   much I would have stuck with it  but thanks to these two guys I'm still here so   I mean as we're all familiar with (I'm  I'm speaking to an educated audience here)    there were other treaty ports but the main  treaty ports that existed in Japan of   course were Nagasaki Yokohama and Kobe. Now Nagasaki  was where Glover was initially active so he   was really I guess the first   of the Scots to make his mark on   Japan and it's really through him that we see  a lot of other well-known Scots arriving   in Japan and making some kind of mark in Japan  through his recommendation. So he's kind of this   almost omnipresent sort of um I don't know if  it's godlike status but I could say, but he seems to have his finger in an inordinate  amount of pies in Japan during this time period. Now of course Yokohama we do have you know flotsam  and jetsam of foreigners in Yokohama   there's a huge amount of Europeans  went through Yokohama during this time and we have   this very diverse and dynamic population for a  number of years before we get the settlement of Kobe which opens up in 1868. Now  we often hear of Kobe referred to as the model   settlement and I think even some people who are long-term residents of of Kobe or   or who grew up in Kobe seem to have this kind of  snobbish mentality that Kobe is the kind   of the number one place for foreigners. It  has this uh there is definitely a a Kobe   attitude I think amongst those foreigners  who did grow up in Kobe and certainly   uh people like Harold S Williams who was probably  the number one historian for the Kobe   settlement certainly has that high opinion  of themselves and of Kobe. Now   both men uh Alexander Cameron Sim spent most  of his life in Kobe and    James Murdoch himself spent a considerable amount  of time in Kobe as well writing for the Kobe   Chronicle. Now the two men did know each other  they were it's clear from the research   that I have done that they were friends uh  how friendly they were is not really that   clear but there is some mention  of Sim in Murdoch's work but that doesn't   really that doesn't tell me that there was a a  particularly strong friendship because Sim is   really mentioned by everyone who has anything  to do with Kobe so anyone who went through   Kobe or spent any time in Kobe mentions Sim  and he is this kind of Larger than Life   figure who seems to have had a kind of again  a top dog personality in Kobe itself   as a as a kind of very masculine figure and  a person who everyone seems to look up to and   admire and has an almost kind of militaristic  autocratic personality and we'll go into   a little bit more detail as to as to what kind of  person he was in a minute. But just to to give you   an idea for those of you perhaps who are  not familiar with Scottish geography the   northeast of Scotland's not a particularly large  place. In the 1800s the population wasn't particularly large by any stretch and Sim  came from around this area here. This is Banffshire.   I grew up in this area here just really   between the two. I initially grew up in Stonehaven   just around the corner from where where  Murdoch grew up. Murdoch grew up in a parish   called Fetteresso which is a blink and you miss it  village just outside of Stonehaven. So both    men came from very humble beginnings  very poor backgrounds but managed to    work their way up to uh some  they were really self-made men by the time of   their deaths. So an interesting quote that I always come   back to which kind of tells me a lot   about the Scots abroad - and I'm not really trying   to say aren't the Scots great? - but really  circumstances did cause a lot of Scots to   make the most of their avenues in  in the British Empire but as you can see as   Charles Dilke had said "In British settlements from  Canada to Ceylon, from Eden to Bombay for every   Englishman that you meet who has worked himself  to wealth from small beginnings without external   aid you find 10 Scotchmen. It's strange indeed that  Scotland has not become the popular name for the   United Kingdom." Now that's you know  that's one way that's obviously a Charles   Dilke is having a little bit of fun  there but how strong the Scottish identity among   Scots abroad was I'm not really 100% sure. You know I'm very secure in my Scottish identity   very proud of my Scottish identity how other Scots  how proud they were of being Scottish or did   they have were were they more proud of their  of their Britishness is difficult for me to    to clarify sometimes. But I think Sim and  especially Murdoch as well are those these two men   stand out for me as as kind of quintessentially  Scottish people in the terms that they   even though they never really returned to  Scotland they still remain very much   indefatigable as Scottish people. Now  I came across an article in the   University of Aberdeen's archives where there's a  a scholar from the University referred to in 1922   to the 'ubiquitous Aberdonian'. So Aberdonian is someone  from from Aberdeen but Aberdonians are actually   very well represented in Japan's Meiji  history and of course the granddaddy of them all   there Thomas Blake Glover he's the industrial  uh industrialist uh Merchant extraordinaire um   he's considered to be the inspiration for  for Puccini's Madam Butterfly. Whether there's any   truth to that or not is another story  but he is among other things well known for   gunrunning, opium smuggling, was initially  a Jardine Matheson merchant that's what brought him   to the east the Far East, and then like many Scots  after him they seem to have arrived in Hong Kong and Shanghai and found that there's  there's too many Scots and they've eaten up   all the the opportunities so there's time to go  somewhere else to see if we can find uh pastures   new and sort of make some more cash. So he's really one of the first to to get out   there to Nagasaki and initially it looks  like he's been sent out there by by Jardine Matheson   but interestingly a long-term friend  of mine has recently become the CEO of    Crombie so the famous jackets the Crombie  jackets which I'm sure everybody's familiar   with. So my friend from Aberdeen has   recently revitalized the company and   and started to make the jackets again and in  his dealings with the archives from the   Crombie mills he came across some information  that the head of Crombie at the   time had asked Thomas Blake Glover to go out to find new markets for the Crombie wool so   he was kind of employed in a in  a couple of (again trying to make the most of his   uh his opportunities in the Far East) but one  of those opportunities he was trying to explore   was to sell Crombie wool to the Japanese. So he's  one of perhaps the most ubiquitous of the Aberdonians in Japan but we've also got  A.A. Shand so um or rather I could I suppose I   could really deal with with with Brunton. Brunton  was also from just outside Aberdeen, a tiny village   called Muchalls and Richard Brunton   is known as the father of Japanese lighthouses.   Now I'm sure most of you are familiar with these  o-yatoi gaikokujin [hired foreigners] are often labeled the   father of something in Japan. So that the  father of Japanese lighthouses or the father   of sport or the father of banking or the  father of physics or or something. There's always   a fatherly benevolent title to some of these  people and Richard Brunton was a recommendation   of Glover and he was trained by the Stevensons  in Lighthouse design and he is responsible   for numerous firsts in Japan such as the the  first Iron Bridge in Yokohama, the first sewage   system, the first detailed maps of Yokohama I  think were Richard Henry Brunton's Maps, gas   street lighting was another thing that he  was famous for. He doesn't seem to have been a   particularly nice guy. If you   read his Memoir he's very critical of   the Japanese, to the point of sometimes being  a bit insulting and very very high opinion of   himself and his own ability, very ambitious man  but nevertheless he made his mark on    Japanese modernization. A.A. Shand so he was  a local boy enough grew up very close   to where Alexander Cameron Sim grew up in Turriff  again the northeast of Scotland. He went out to   Japan as again another father considered the  father of modern banking and then   he went out there as a young man  of 20 years old and after he'd been   in India and in 1872 he was employed by the  Japanese Ministry of Finance and then    he was the first person to detail the bank bookkeeping so he was the first   person to introduce Western banking accountancy  practices or techniques to the Japanese and he   also helped Japanese Bankers to set up  the the First Central Bank in 1874 and then we've   got Sir Thomas Sutherland so again another Banker, the founder of the Hong   Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation or HSBC. He was from Aberdeen. Aberdeen University graduate, went   out to establish a China Nagasaki shipping  line and then later Yokohama Kobe line in 1866.   and then [in] 1869 he effectively opened Japan to  tourism through cruises whereby   Japan became a a popular tourist destination. In 1874 he became managing director of P & O shipping   between 1884 and 1900 so at that point really  you know these are just a snapshot of   some of the Scots at that time, the  more famous Northeast Scots who were making   their mark on Japan at this time. Now if any of  you have been to the the cemetery in Yokohama   or the foreign Cemetery in Kobe but Yokohama  is full of grave sites with the    the city Aberdeen, born in Aberdeen written on the  gravestones, and really this was testament to Aberdeen's   place as a ship building centre at that time so  by the sort of late 1850s Aberdeen   was kind of had reached its peak as a ship  building centre. It had really failed to make   that transition towards steam ships and it  was really still rooted in sail ship   design and the best sail ships or the  best tea clippers were being built in Japan   so Thermopylae the fastest tea clipper at the time  and that was an Aberdeen built ship,   and then Glover also tried to to revitalize the  shipbuilding industry in Aberdeen by getting   a few orders in for ships for the   Satsuma clan. So I think the Josho Maru I think   it it was called, or the Whirlwind, was   Japan's first modern warship I believe. So   that was ordered by Glover on behalf of the  the Satsuma clan, so that was really the last   really good order   of ships for the Aberdeen shipping   industry at that time. After that it really  started to decline quite rapidly, so Glover had   helped to prop that up for a few more years  longer than it perhaps should have done, thanks   to orders from Japanese clans at the  time who were eager to get their hands on modern warships. So around about that time as well  we have a visit to Aberdeen University   by Lawrence Oliphant who is fresh back from  Japan after his accompanying the Earl   of Elgin to organize the the treaties with  Japan in 1857 and at the University of Aberdeen   he gives a talk entitled 'Notes on Japan'   about the the customs and dress of the Japanese.   Now I would like to think at that time that  someone like Alexander Cameron Sim was   in attendance of this talk - no  real way of knowing but I'm sure at that time   that the seed has been planted within  Aberdeen that Japan is open for business and   there's this this very exotic locale that's  previously been shut off to the West for    the last couple of hundred years and there's an  opportunity there for men of the city to   go out there and get their hands on some  some riches or just experience this exotic culture.   I've really no idea what motivated people but  like to think that this was a turning   point in the history of Northeast  Scotland and the opening of Empire if you like. So who was A.C. Sim? So he was born in a a  a farmship [farm] called Boharm which is just outside   Aberlour in Banffshire in Scotland in 1840. Aberlour  these days is famous for Walkers shortbread so   I'm sure most of you have had Walkers  shortbread at some point in your life, the famous   biscuits from Scotland. And Sim was  born just a couple of kilometres   up the road from that factory. He came from a  a humble background, a humble family that they   were really tenant farmers who rented a farm but the the family was well   educated. They obviously saw education   as a pathway to prosperity and his brother    George was a well-known antiquarian and naturalist  in Aberdeen and since I've been looking into    the life of Alexander Cameron  Sim I'm sure some of you have done a DNA   test with ancestry.com without really just  purely by coincidence it seems to be that a   a distant relative of mine appears to have  been a a relative of Alexander Cameron Sim so   coincidentally many years after looking into this  I found myself related to this man without   realizing so it has been quite a surreal experience.  But he very quickly moves up the   the ranks of becoming a pharmacist in  various Chemists in the northeast of Scotland. He   has a brief period in Aberdeen University and then  lands himself a job as a pharmacist in the   Royal Hospital in London. Now while Sim is there  he's a member of the London Scottish Rifles so   he's very much an amateur military man  if you like but he's obviously clearly got some   kind of ambition. There's reference in the   Royal Hospital at the time of Sim asking for a   pay rise so he clearly thinks he's due one,  doesn't get one unfortunately or fortunately   perhaps so he decides to to jack it in and leaves for the Far East, for   for Hong Kong. Now obviously there's been some   connection there I'm not really sure what   the connection is, there's obviously some London  connection that he's made while he's down there   at the Royal Hospital and this connection  has made some kind of progress in Hong   Kong so that's the draw. There's a   drug or a chemist known as Llewellyn's Drug Hall um   so I haven't really found out much about who Llewellyn  is but clearly he was a friend I think of   Sim. I'm assuming is a friend of Sim's from his  London days and Sim has gone out there to   join or work for Llewellyn in Hong Kong. So  initially he works at the Royal Naval Hospital   in Hong Kong and again I think perhaps at the  time perhaps arrived a little bit too late   to make his mark. Hong Kong was probably  beginning to be a quite bustling and    large settlement by that time and perhaps chances  weren't as readily available as he might have   hoped they were. So he very quickly moves up to Shanghai and follows Llewellyn to Shanghai and   again doesn't seem want to hang around for  very long in Shanghai. Again I'm assuming because   the settlement was starting to become larger  and then he finds his way to Nagasaki   and then reaches Kobe by about 1870 or just  late 1869. So by the time he arrives he's lauded as   a "boating star" so he's obviously got himself a  reputation as some kind of athlete and    I'm assuming that he developed his reputation  in Hong Kong. There's various boating clubs   that existed in Hong Kong and  Shanghai at this time, a lot of sports clubs that   were beginning to to develop Cricket clubs.  Horse racing was obviously a big feature   of the settlements in Hong Kong and Shanghai  as well, so when he arrives in Kobe he's lauded   as a boating star, so this is a kind  of a beginning of Sim's athletic career if   you like. So this leads Sim and several other  individuals in Kobe at this time to form   the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club in 1870. So   you may or may not have heard the   of the Kobe Club, so these kind of two clubs  were had a kind of friendly rivalry. The   Kobe Club began as the International Club  whereas the Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club it kept its name from the moment of inception  and it still exists. I think barely, it's   hanging on by its fingernails but it still exists  today as of 2024. Now I can see Mike Galbraith's in   the audience here. Now he may disagree  with this statement but people from Kobe   and particularly Kobe Regatta and Athletic Club  members they consider themselves to be the oldest   unbroken club in Japan. The club  has had the same name since 1870 until the   present day. So whereas the YC and AC has  perhaps an earlier Inception date then the name   began as the Yokohama Cricket Club and then  changed I think it was in the 1880s - maybe   Mike can clarify that for us - but   people in Kobe and maybe or maybe not   I agree with them, but they believe they have  the ownership of the oldest Club, oldest   existing Club in Japan. So there's a friendly  rivalry between these two clubs, the Kobe Club   being the more elite institution that  catered to your Diplomat or military   brass. It was generally a lot more exclusive, harder  to get in, had a lot of very strange rules    about who could join who couldn't join, so in a city that was predominantly merchant or   or insurance agent careers  (everyone had a career as a merchant or an   insurance agent) merchants weren't allowed to to  join, whereas the Kobe Regatta and Athletic   Club was a much more egalitarian institution um  and it allowed anyone to join. So it began on   the 24th of September 1870 had a $10 Mexican  membership fee which was you know a sizable   amount of money at that time or a $30 Mexican  lifetime membership. So it began at a time   when in Kobe in 1870 if you read the   early newspapers from that time there's a lot   of reports of crime, of it being quite a  dangerous place. Some people are reported to   be walking around wearing a pistol and there's definitely a feeling   of a kind of Wild West frontier town at that  time. I think it would make a fantastic   miniseries if we could have some sort of wild  East and of course there's routinely    un-ins with local Samurai and some drunken  sailors have found themselves on the wrong   end of a katana [Japanese sword] so there's clearly some  need for some kind of pastime or some kind   of unofficial gathering spot to keep   people in check so it really seems that the    Kobe athletic club, Regatta and Athletic Club  is there for this purpose to kind of keep    keep the men in check and stop people  from getting drunk and committing petty crimes or really perhaps safety in  numbers where the people who considered   themselves to be civilized and respectable  need a place to gather where they can enjoy themselves and exchange information  and keep themselves out of trouble. So   it's a very interesting time to set  up the club. Now again it's   very similar to the clubs that existed at the same  time in other parts of the British Empire, not that   Japan was part of the British Empire, but it's very  similar to clubs that existed in the   Indian Raj, in colonial Hong Kong again in  the settlements of Shanghai we see similar clubs   setting up so what we're seeing in Kobe  Nagasaki Yokohama are very similar to those institutions. Now having  these kind of clubs seems to have been a real draw   for many men to access these kind of sports. Now  I'm not sure at this time how popular or how   accessible these these kind of sports would have  been to your average working class individual   in Scotland for sure, but even other parts  of the UK I don't think it was something that a   working class gentleman could easily get  access to was Recreation and sports. It was   definitely something that was more of   an elite Pastime for individuals who   went to public school in particular, so this  was a really egalitarian membership so   it was a chance for working class  individuals who were in the employ of   companies over in Japan or who were working as  merchants to really kind of climb the class   ladder and sort of buy into a little bit of that  lifestyle that they might have been excluded   from back home in the UK and generally  speaking candidature of these clubs translated   to a place at or some involvement  with the Municipal Council.   Kobe at that time had quite an organized  Municipal Council which if you look   at the membership of that Council those  same people can generally be found on   the [membership] roll of the Kobe Club  or the KRAC if not both. So   there's a definite correlation here between club  membership and running the settlement itself.   So along with the KRAC we've also got the   Concordia Club the German club in Kobe, we've   got freemasonry is very prominent  also in Kobe as well. Now Sim I'm not 100% sure   if he was considered not eligible for   a more exclusive International Club he may have   been excluded from that, he may or may  have not been a freemason so he may have not   been able to get into the Freemasons Lodge. So  it may have been just an opportunity for him   to to Really create his own club that he  could get to and he's definitely been a   crucial figure in the formation of the  club because there is a need for a captain of   the club and Sim is given the role of captain of  the club so this is a kind of an unusual role   It's not so much president, it  seems to be very much an unofficial role but   he's considered the captain of the club and he's  the only person to to have this title the captain   of the club so although there were  several individuals involved in the formation of   this club it's very much seen as Sim's baby he's  the guy who seems to be the    person who everyone looks up to at this club so  the club really began with the premise   of fostering international relations between   between Japanese and Foreigner but this never   really seems to have materialized. Now there  could be a number of reasons, perhaps the Japanese   just weren't interested in this crazy foreigners  doing rowing and and chucking a ball    around the park. So there may have been an element  that the Japanese just really did not didn't get   what was going on at these sports clubs  but there also doesn't really seem to be much   of an effort to involve the Japanese in  these early stages in the games until much   much later as the club grows in prominence then  we see more prominent Japanese being invited to the club but again only very elite Japanese.  Working class Japanese or lower class Japanese   are certainly not invited to join and  also there's a large Chinese population in Kobe   at this time as well working as stevedores  and really go-betweens between foreigners and   Japanese and there's really no, seems to have  been no effort to include the Chinese again until   much later until about the 1890s. And again the  idea of mixing Chinese Japanese foreigners   as in Western foreigners together, it doesn't  really happen in any kind of meaningful   way throughout the club's history, despite  the fact that it was designed to foster   International relationships. Now just not long  after this photograph or this may   have been the older building or the building  that was built after the typhoon, but there was   a typhoon in 1871 it was fairly catastrophic   and it basically took out the whole Bund the the main Bund of Kobe and destroyed many buildings with a huge tidal   surge and the club was one of the first things  to be destroyed. So this is a kind of    I think a a catalyst in Alexander Cameron  Sim's life because at this juncture   the club the KRAC really takes on a role   as being an area that people congregate to   create some sort of disaster relief to   to help out those in need. Initially it's   for foreigners so it's the   Relief Committee that's formed is the relief is   distributed to foreigners through the  KRAC but as disasters come in the  in the following years  then we see more and more relief efforts   towards Japanese communities coming from the KRAC. So you can see here we've got the   the boat house at Merume[?] which is much further inland now in Kobe. It's about a good kilometre  inland. The original shoreline has been  extended through land reclamation but you can   see there that there was quite a lot  of well-established buildings along the   the main bund in Kobe which were you  know pretty much wiped out by this typhoon in 1871. So here's a couple of interesting  photographs that we can have a look at   here. So this is the initial photograph that I saw  and I had really hoped that this was a football   team but it turned out to be a  an athletic team so there was an athletic regatta   that took place in 1885 between Scotland  England and Germany and the Scots won this tournament. And I think it was really  off the back of Alexander Cameron Sim, I   don't think anyone else was particularly  athletic in the settlement at this time but Sim   appears to have being a genuine athlete, someone who can run from uh there was a   a famous Marathon that was held I think in the  mid 1870s between two individuals but it   was considered a marathon one of  the first marathons to be done in or held in   in Japan and Sim I think it's this individual  here he races this gentleman here from the   the settlement to the top of Maya-san [Mount Maya] in Kobe.  Now it's about a good 14 kilometres I think   and I think about 10 or 12 years  ago they recreated this run and as an    inaugural event members of the KRAC were  invited to to join for free and I managed   to blag a spot as well because of  my research and I attempted to do this run    a much shorter Run 10 kilometers up from  the bottom of Maya-san to the top and it   nearly destroyed me! And I had trained quite a lot to do this run and he   I think his initial time was an hour  and a half. Now I did mine I think I was pushing   two hours by the time I finished mine. And   although there were some very fit Japanese   people who did finish in I think just  over an hour, those people were like in peak   physical condition, so he must have genuinely  been a proper athlete to have been able to   to run from the settlement to the the top and  considering what kind of shoes would he   have been wearing at those times if he  was wearing these high boots or was   it very small uh light plimsoles or   what and there was no real road at   that time from settlement to Maya-san it would  have just been a a dirt trail all the way up   to the top of the mountain so a genuine impressive  feat from a guy in the 1870s to   be able to do that. Now the other photograph  we can see here so a much older Sim you can see   in 1888 here sitting amongst the  first this is considered to be the first football   match in Japan which was  an interport which is the the name given to   the tournaments between Yokohama and Kobe,  sometimes Nagasaki and Shanghai ,but the   the most famous rivalry was between  Kobe and Yokohama. I'm not really sure who has   the most number of wins but on this  occasion the football match was won by    Kobe. Now I think this is considered on the the  Japanese football league's website as the first   official football game. Now I don't know if they  were playing under Association rules at this time   or if this was actually the case so  Association rules being modern soccer was   it an actual game of modern soccer  or was it football which sometimes they   refer to down here in Australia where rugby  or it could be Australian Rules football, so   I'm not 100% sure if when they say this is the  first football game in Japan whether it   is genuinely football or soccer as we know it.  But it's an interesting    picture all the same. So again was Sim a player or  was Sim the referee but advancing age I'm   not 100% sure if he was a player or not but it's  very interesting to see how much he fostered   games such as football, rugby, athletics,  boating - really any sport that you can think   of was disseminated by the KRAC through  to the wider population of Kansai during this time. So Sim obviously had a a business so he was a  druggist or a chemist. While he was captain   of the club that was his main business and  he's considered to be the first person to   to sell 'ramune' in the this style of bottle.  Now Ramune itself is just a Japanese   pronunciation of lemonade and there were  various Ramunes that existed at the time   but they were very inconsistent and  didn't follow a particular recipe   which could change frequently but Sim  is considered to be the first person to actually   have a consistent recipe for the Ramune and  he has this popping bottle which   is now you know beloved in Japan. So  Sim is considered to be the first person to to   start this drink. Now the reason why it  became so popular and why Sim began to sell it   was it was labeled as a cure or a  preventative drink for cholera. Now around about   the late 1870s cholera had come to Japan and it  really had a pretty disastrous effect on anyone   who contracted it. It had something like an 80% death rate of people who were infected   with cholera so you're really not left with  much chance to recover from this disease and   at the time people thought or people were being  told that the tansan or carbonated water if   you gargled with carbonated water that this was a  preventative measure and it would keep the   cholera away. Now Sim has a  great reputation in Kobe as being a kind of   humanitarian, he's famous for his disaster relief  efforts but at this time he's he surely must have   been aware as a druggist that this  had very little effect on cholera so he   was effectively pedaling his Ramune and profiteering basically off cholera   epidemics so he sold his ramune for a good [mark-up], four  or five times more expensive than other Brands.   because his one was considered to be the most  effective against cholera and around about 1880 he   makes an absolute fortune selling his ramune during a cholera pandemic and he ends up because of   this becoming one of the most wealthy people in the settlement so it's a very interesting side of his character. So you know  he's lauded as this humanitarian and famous   for his disaster relief efforts but this is a kind  of a a dark blemish on his character here that   he's using ramune as a cure when  obviously it has no effect whatsoever on cholera   and he makes a a 4,000 to 5,000 yen profit   from this from the venture so through   this this gives him some sort of financial  freedom if you like to to focus more on the   on the club and to give himself a bit  more financial freedom to build a name for   himself as a humanitarian later on. Now with  the profits that he makes from selling his   ramune he buys a large yacht which  he uses to to navigate the the Inland   Sea and at this time in Japan many native Japanese are not allowed   to navigate the Inland sea by themselves and only  foreign pilots are allowed to do this   so he's one of the I think perhaps the only   one who's not a a recognized pilot or ship's   pilot to be able to to navigate the Inland sea so  he has a crew, a Japanese crew of about four or   five people and he sails up and down  the Inland Sea basically at his leisure    and then various visitors who come to Kobe  and who want to see a little bit of the islands they get in contact with Sim  and he takes them down uh and also gives his boat for Charter and at this time he kind of builds  himself up as a ship Builder. He seems to   have had some shipbuilding knowledge from where he grew up in Aberdeenshire   There seems to have been some ship building Riverboat ship building knowledge from his from   his father who was a fisherman so he's able to  to capitalize on this knowledge and becomes a   bit more prolific as a ship owner  as a shipbuilder as a salvage what's the   word a person who can who can salvage ships that  have washed up on the shore or have   run into difficulty and a shipwright so he starts a a little business up as a   shipwright so he starts to have his fingers  in a lot of pies and again as I said at the   beginning he's a fairly ambitious guy starts to  eye things like the police, wants to   become a policeman, puts his name forward  for the police and he loses out to    to a Swedish guy called Herman Trotzig. Now I'm  not sure why he loses out but anyway he does lose   out but he does seem to get a consolation prize  which is the fire chief so he's   awarded the role of fire chief. Now this is  a kind of a role that's not although it   doesn't really sound that impressive today   in the settlements if you were given the role of   fire chief that was generally for people  who were financially successful or financially   significant so for example in Yokohama the  the Keswicks of Jardine Matheson fame they   were the ones who always occupied the role  of fire chief so similarly people who became a   chair of the Yokohama race club for example  always went to the financially significant   people in the settlement or people who had some  sort of political sway. So he became Ramune Tycoon, he's the captain of the KRAC Club, he's got  his own business as a druggist, buys   himself a yacht, sets himself up as a shipwright and really has Kobe wrapped around   his little finger by this time. So he's a pretty  significant figure by around the late    1880s and it's this Larger than Life personality  that really gives him this this sense of   civic duty that really has no no parallel  in any of the other ports. So he starts to   make a name for himself after several  disasters such as earthquakes typhoons etc starts   to really take an interest in raising money and  and becoming a guy who's a humanitarian. As a   volunteer he often funds his own relief missions  to Osaka when there's a a typhoon he   takes his own boat and starts to to dish out the  the relief by himself and then there's a few   other significant relief missions that   stand out in particular. So in 1891 there's   an enormous earthquake in the Mino Owari  earthquake and Sim goes up to the   affected area has killed at least I think 10,000  people were reported were killed and   Sim goes up there, organizes a leadership  Mission, stays up there for a few months   donates a lot of carpentry tools so that people  can rebuild their houses and this is really   well received by the Japanese population   of the affected area. So again   because of this he seems to have  taken on this role of this benevolent   benefactor for Kobe so every time there's  some sort of disaster Sim is the first   person to act or or to get some kind  of relief Mission going. Now there seems   to be a little bit of rivalry between some residents in Kobe as to who can get the the   disaster relief Mission going the quickest uh  but Sim always seems to have the edge so he seems   to be the guy who does it quickly.  There's another missionary whose name   escapes me from Kobe he's considered to be  the father of of mountaineering in Japan  [Rev. Walter Weston] He organizes a mission as  well and he write writes a book about the   his account of therelief mission that he does  but there's no mention of Sim so there   seems to be like rivalry who can be the best humanitarian between   some of the residents of Kobe. So it seems to  be who can out volunteer the other   but in 1896 there's a tsunami hits north  of Japan and then the San Roku coastline is   very badly affected 22,000 people lose  lives there. Sim spends weeks in this area in   1896 helping people rebuild their houses and  it's this that by this time he's built himself up   a reputation of being a real asset to the Japanese population by helping out    people in in badly affected areas so   it naturally attracts the attention of the   Japanese emperor this time and he's recognized  for his efforts for disaster relief and he's   given personally by the Japanese emperor  in 1896 a set of sake Zuki a set   of silver sake Cups by the Emperor himself  now it's it's a mystery where   these Cups have gone, nobody really seems to know  what happened to them but    it was quite an honour for a foreigner at this  time to be awarded by the Emperor   and again this cements Sim's status as this  very prominent individual again not quite   able to to get to the higher echelons of Society in Kobe, he's not quite British   Ambassador level but he's you know he's  almost there and interestingly when the    the settlement is handed over back  to the Japanese the British Ambassador [Minister] at   the time or the British consul is indisposed  became sick I'm not sure if he becomes   sick or if he takes a step down to allow Sim  to hand over the keys so it comes down to Sim   to hand over the keys to the Japanese in  1899. So it's quite fitting that this   this role goes to Sim and at this  point 1899 he is given the position   of the unofficial head of the   Kobe fire brigade and then sadly just one   year after this Sim is in Osaka with a friend  and he eats oysters in a restaurant   in Osaka and then he succumbs to typhoid  after eating these oysters and then he    there you go oysters yes so oyster junkies so he's  obviously an oyster junkie himself and then he   and his companion succumb to typhoid just  a few weeks afterwards. His funeral is documented in the Kobe  Chronicle of 1900 and from looking through the newspapers in Kobe and Yokohama over  the years about funerals of foreigners   I've never come across a a description of a   funeral where the whole town Japanese population come out to see off Sim as he's for the funeral   this is something that's  kind of quite unique amongst foreigners   certainly amongst foreigners in Kobe so that's  one very interesting aspect of someone   who would become known as the the father  of the father of sport in Western Japan. So here's   another father, the birth of another father and  then so that's really Mr Sim so   James Murdoch that kind of leads us on a mention here  of a poem so James Murdoch was many things   he wasn't a poet wasn't one of them his poems  are really pretty dreadful but if you ever   come across any of his literature that he  wrote so Don Juan's grandson in Japan is probably   the best of of all of the books that he wrote but  there's a poem that exists, it's really a kind   of a a compilation of or a miscellany of doggerel  really, short stories and poetry but we've   got reference here to a poem about the  Inland sea and specifically Kobe so I often say   when I think of the nights and you have spent  in talks with doughty Sim so here we are so there's   obviously some clear friendship between Murdoch and  Sim doesn't go into too much detail about it there   but there's clearly an affinity with a fellow  Northeast Scot and then again there's reference   to the club and its importance and again  this kind of mythical or fabled    butting of heads between the local population and  the government officials who are   always kept at bay from joining the  clubs. So who was Murdoch? Murdoch again is a second person, James Murdoch born in Stonehaven in 1856 a  few years someone like   AC Sim so a good 14 years after Sim's birth and  again someone who is from a humble background   but is really rather than being a person who is a pioneer he is more of an academic   so he is an academically gifted student, wins  a bursary to go to University at the time   and around about this time or perhaps a few  years before there's another Japanese student   who is a young Satsuma Samurai who's  funded by Thomas Blake Glover to come to live   with his family in Aberdeen and he attends   the school just down the road from the   University so again does that resonate  with Murdoch, was he aware of that again it's   quite a small place quite a small population at  that time and I'm sure the significance of that   would have perhaps had some play with  Murdoch's decision later to go to Japan. So he   excels at Classics Greek and Latin. At  this stage there's no real giveaway that he's   interested in a life in the East  and then from Aberdeen University he goes to   Oxford briefly to the Sorbonne and then he comes  back to Aberdeen to to teach for a year but   really he has ants in his pants, he can't stay  in one place for more than five minutes and   he is really kind of drawn, sees the value  of his education and the money that he   can make traveling to different parts  of the Empire. So he uh very quickly after   his marriage and his first son, his first  and only son is born, he takes up a a position in   Australia. So he comes down to Australia to the  Maryborough and Brisbane high schools where he's   given a a very prestigious position as a school principal but he doesn't really seem   to stay very long he's at a time when  being an atheist is really quite rare    and would have gone down like  a lead balloon in most high schools at this   time. He is an ardent atheist and this may  have been a problem at Maryborough and he   quits for some reason. That may have been a pay  dispute but it's most likely because of his atheism so this is the town where   where Murdoch came from [Stonehaven] again famous for shipping   more for fish than anything else but really the prospects for a young man who is   interested in Classics in Greek there's not  much for him there so obviously Murdoch had   his eyes set on on bigger prospects so that's  what brought him to Australia so - Patricia: "Darren   Darren yes we're getting close to 8:30 so ah  okay we need to wrap it up so we can get to questions"  So Murdoch he was a a a journalist he wrote for the  Boomerang I'll just wrap this up quickly because   Murdoch's perhaps not as interesting as Sim but he   traveled Australia writing articles for   for the Boomerang but he was also at this time  a real kind of foaming at the mouth racist   He had some very racist views towards the  Chinese which was kind of influenced by    the Boomerang and at this time he produces   a number of really pretty dreadful books    Ayami San which is based on his life in  Japan and he produces perhaps the only   or the first poem in Scots that's published  in Japan which is certainly a first. He's   kind of famous in a lot of his books for  really basing his books upon his own life um he   was a proponent of not a proponent but  a customer of Nectarine Number Nine which was   a famous brothel in Yokohama in the 1890s that was  frequented by Hiseo Nogguchi apparently who's   on the 1,000 yen note. He was famously  Natsume Soseki's teacher very briefly    for a four-year period. Around this time he  embarks on a journalist career in Japan.   He produces his own publication a magazine  called Japan Echo which is a spectacular failure   despite it being actually a quite modern  publication for the time. It involves uh it is   really an international affair, he involves   early Japanese photography pioneers to   publish in the magazine. From here  he jumps to Paraguay to the new Australia colony   which is a a spectacular failure that brings  him back eventually to Japan where he   kind of spends a long time in his wilderness  years. He publishes and researches his first   volumes for a history of Japan between 1903 and  1911 and then eventually through publication of   these books he gets a chance to  become the chair of Japanese Studies at   University of Sydney. He develops a lifelong  friendship with Soseki in later years    purely because Soseki rejects the bungaku hakushi [Doctor of Literature] in 1911. This resonates with Murdoch who had rejected   the Order of the Rising Sun twice and then he  asks Soseki to review his history of   of Japan. Now Murdoch at this time was very optimistic  about Japanese modernization. He really felt   that Japan had a lot to offer the world  whereas Soseki at this point was very   pessimistic that Japan was losing its  Essence really by pandering towards Western modernization so this just some pictures there  of the new Australia Colony   but Murdoch eventually returns to   Australia where he becomes the first chair of   Japanese studies but unfortunately once he  arrives in Australia just as he's about   to really begin and establishes himself as a  Japan scholar Japan expert he succumbs to cancer   unfortunately dies. So that's really the end  of the story so if we want to have   some questions there I  welcome your questions. Sorry to drone on! Patricia: "Speaking   Kobe cemetery database and appeal for help of dying yeah you wanted to mention about your  Cemetery work in Kobe." Oh yeah yeah the cemeteries   so I mean this was initially why Alex Byrne   had contacted me I think was because of the   cemeteries article that I had written, so I wrote  an article about the cemeteries in Kobe and   Osaka and this was my first publication when  I was at Kobe University and it's the one which   people contact me about the most. So I'm  trying to get funding for a database an   online database where people can trace the  the or use it for research to trace their    ancestors or just to do some online research  because the cemetery itself is actually quite   difficult to enter it's not open  very often and it involves corresponding   with the the sexton at the cemetery and it  can be a bit of a convoluted process so and also   the grave site the gravestones  themselves are beginning to deteriorate quite   rapidly so something really needs to be done to  document these grave sites as   soon as possible so that's something that I  would really welcome anybody if anyone's   interested in becoming involved in that or   helping me to to canvass funding I would    really appreciate your input and  please get in touch with me at this email if if you feel that that would be something  that You' be interested in collaborating with. Patricia: "Okay thank you very much. All right if people  want to unmute they certainly can."