In the early 1880s, Kawada Ryokichi, a young samurai training at a shipyard on Clydeside, near Glasgow, met and fell in love with a Glaswegian girl - a bookshop assistant - by the name of Jeanie Eadie, and took the many letters she wrote to him (together with a lock of her hair) back to Japan in 1884, where they remained undiscovered for almost a hundred years. Subsequently, Kawada was to have an extraordinary career at the heart of the building of the new Meiji Japan, but it was his period in Scotland which informed everything he later accomplished - from shipbuilding to agriculture, and, at...
In the early 1880s, Kawada Ryokichi, a young samurai training at a shipyard on Clydeside, near Glasgow, met and fell in love with a Glaswegian girl - ...