Living
Kameoka Corner 05-24-09
When Japan opened its doors to the outside world as the Meiji Era began in the late 1860s, a number of people from countries around the world went there intending to spend a few years, then return to their home countries.
Most did, but some found Japan to be a country much to their liking and spent the rest of their lives there. One was a Scotsman named Thomas Glover who lived in Nagasaki.
The Glover Mansion, a house which he built in 1863, is said to be the earliest Western-style home in Japan. It sets on a cliff overlooking Nagasaki Harbor and is a major tourist attraction in Nagasaki.
Glover was a shipbuilder and is credited with bringing the first steam locomotive into Japan. Lafcadio Hearn, an Irishman went to Japan in 1890 at the age of 40. Hearn lived the rest of his life in Japan, the last few years with Japanese citizenship, a Japanese name and a Japanese wife.
He introduced Japan to the West through his writings. Atop Mt. Hiei, just to the northeast of the city of Kyoto, is a monument erected to the memory of Bruno Petzold, a German Tendai Bishop and scholar, who spent years studying the Buddhist and Shinto religions until his death in Japan in 1949.
Merrell Vories from our neighboring state of Kansas went to Japan in the early 1900s to teach English and do missionary work. For the next 60 years, until his death in 1964, he and his Japanese wife did amazing humanitarian and educational Christian work in a small town not far from Kameoka.
In recent years, two young people from Oklahoma, Lisa Rogers from Edmond and Barry Keith from Tulsa, went to Japan to teach English for a few years. Both lived and taught in Kameoka in the early 1990s. Today, both still live in Japan, both have Japanese spouses and both may well live out their lives in that small island nation.
Article provided by Larry Jones, member of the Stillwater Sister Cities Council
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