Frank Toovey Lake

Lake's story also involves Richard Henry Brunton and Thomas B Glover as well as the aforementioned Ernest Satow, all of whom had important roles in Japan's modernisation during the Meiji era.

His father was a civil engineer involved with the construction of the Grand Junction Canal and his mother's family were mill-owners in Kings Langley, Hertfordshire, England.

Both were boarders[4] Lake left school at the age of fourteen and entered the Royal Navy as a Naval Cadet, joining HMS Britannia to begin his officer training.

Lake's naval record shows that the first ship he joined was HMS Argus – at that time stationed in Hong Kong - which he reached after four months sailing from England.

[9]) In November 1868, HMS Manilla was assigned duties to help Richard Henry Brunton survey potential sites for the erection of lighthouses around Japan's coastline.

[10] Brunton, along with his assistant Arthur W Blundell and a party of Japanese officials, embarked at Yokohama and then sailed south with a list of fourteen sites to visit.

However, it is known Lake's death was sudden and unexpected as, in his memoirs Schoolmaster to an Empire published many years later, Brunton wrote, "Eventually we reached [Sanuki] Hiroshima.

Immediately after the funeral ceremony was over, a very pretty sight was presented by quite a number of aged men and women approaching with shrubs and twigs, which they reverently laid on the grave.

Then in 1868 a wealthy villager, called Okara Haju felt pity for the spirit of the officer, gave him a Japanese name Hasegawa Saboro Bei and registered his death at the local temple.

He informed Thomas Blake Glover who in turn brought it to the notice of John Carey Hall, the British Consul in Kobe[15] Hall then informed Ernest Satow, the British Ambassador in Tokyo, who wrote to Viscount Aoki Shuzo, Minister of Foreign Affairs, of his gratitude that the grave was being tended by the islanders[16] In 1899, extensive articles about the grave and the story behind it appeared in English language Japanese newspapers such as the Japan Mail, the Kobe Weekly Chronicle, and the Nagasaki Press before appearing in newspapers worldwide including the London Times and The Sketch in the UK, and the Colonist in New Zealand.

One of the stories in the Kobe Weekly Chronicle reported: 'While coming up from Miyajima in the Snowflake, Mr [Alexander Cameron] Sim and Mr [Mark] Baggallay visited Inoura, a village situated on a small island in the Inland Sea named Hiroshima of Kagawa Prefecture (which must not be confused with the well-known Hiroshima near Ujian) where there exists the tomb of a British officer who was buried there more than thirty years ago.

On casting anchor at Inoura, which is situated on the shores of a beautiful land-locked bay, an old fisherman in a sampan close by was asked if he knew of a foreigner's grave in the neighbourhood.

In a few days, however, he died, and Captain St. John buried his remains in ground belonging to the temple of Ikwoji above Enoura shrine, and, having set up a wooden cross to mark the grave, departed.

Several years afterwards, when this monument had almost decayed from the effects of wind and rain, frost and snow, Awaburi Tokwan, Superior of Ikwoji Temple, and others said:--"Truly it would be too sad if the grave of our solitary guest from afar, who has become a spirit in a strange land, were suffered to pass out of all knowledge."

Thereupon Terawaki Kaemon, head of a village guild, and other sympathisers, such as Oka Ryohaku, set on foot a scheme for the erection of a stone monument, and, the shore folk all with one accord 222 lending their help, the work was finally brought to completion.

In particular, from the 10th to the 16th day of the seventh month, old style, there are still persons found who every year clean and sweep the grave, and, offering up flowers and incense, mourn for and console the spirit of the dead.’" On 3 and 4 September 1932, two reports of the burial of Lake were printed in the Osaka Asahi Shimbun (Kagawa edition).

17, 1969[21] in an article by Rowland G Gould called ‘Lairs of the Forgotten Pirates.’ 'The feeling for the sea is even more dramatically evident in the grave of a British naval officer who died on the island while on a survey mission in 1866.

It was also attended by a descendant of the Toovey family, and an Englishman Graham Thomas who lives in Japan and who was responsible for researching the history of the grave and ascertaining the correct facts.

Copy of Frank Toovey Lake's birth certificate
The grave in 2013
Two participants of the celebration standing behind the new memorial plinth after its unveiling.