Thomas Blake Glover spent the first six years of his life in Fraserburgh, which was fast expanding as a fishing and trading port.

Upon leaving school, Glover took a job as a shipping clerk with the trading company Jardine Matheson[2] and in 1857 he moved to Shanghai.

[4] Anti-western sentiment was rife in Japan in the Bakumatsu period due to the unbalanced treaty agreements imposed upon the Tokugawa shogunate by the United States and other western powers, which included extraterritorial rights.

Nationalistic militants in Satsuma and Chōshū spearheaded anti-government efforts aimed at toppling the Shogunate and restoring the Emperor as sovereign.

The Shogun himself sent her a personal letter," Glover explained, and to sell arms to a rebel force would be a treaty violation.

In the end Glover provided the needed rifles directly from Nagasaki, and accompanied Ito Hirobumi back to Shimonoseki, on 15 October 1865, for his first personal meeting with Kido, who noted: "Trading with our han is strictly prohibited for a foreigner; therefore, Glover is very reluctant about dealing with us," explained Kido; and he had not told his own crew about the sale of guns, which, in any case, were not aboard that ship.

In 1868, Glover made a contract with the Nabeshima clan of Saga Domain in Hizen Province and began to develop Japan's first coal mine at Hashima Island, Takashima.

Thomas Blake Glover died of kidney disease at his home in Tokyo in 1911, and was buried at the Sakamoto International Cemetery in Nagasaki.

[3] Thomas Glover had a common-law marital relationship with a Japanese woman named Awajiya Tsuru (淡路屋 ツル), a native of Bungo province (present day Oita Prefecture) whom he apparently met in Osaka in the early 1870s.

Official household registers preserved at Nagasaki City Hall indicate that Tomisaburō was the son of a woman named Kaga Maki (加賀 マキ).

It is likely, as Brian Burke-Gaffney points out, that the Glover-Madame Butterfly connection is derived from the fact that the American occupation forces nicknamed the former Glover House the "Madame Butterfly House" (purely on the basis of the panoramic view over Nagasaki Harbor and the Euro-Japanese ambiance of the building) and that Nagasaki authorities picked up on this as a way to promote the postwar tourism industry.

[citation needed] What trading houses like Jardine Matheson were looking for were boys of high ambition who showed strength of character useful in negotiation and who were willing to spend years away from their families.

The reason for Jardine Matheson’s appointing Thomas Blake Glover are not documented, even in their own records, and may have involved exotic handshakes.

[10]In Scottish Freemasonry, it is possible for the son of a Freemason to become one himself, at the age of eighteen, but there remains no evidence that Thomas Berry Glover was a member of the secret society.

Due to local government reorganisation, the house became the property of Aberdeen City Council the same year, and in 1997 it was sold to Grampian Japan Trust for £1.

[17][18] A Scottish Samurai award has been initiated by one of Aberdeenshire's most famous sons, who also holds the Order of the Rising Sun; Ronald Stewart Watt, OBE, ORS, OSS 大将軍, KCCR, KHT, 9th Dan, Hanshi, assisted by the Aberdeen Sports Council.

The novel relives in fiction his true life rise and fall, and his love affair with a courtesan who, unknown to him, has a son for which he has longed.

[citation needed] In addition, Glover appeared as an enemy in the Japanese videogame Ryū ga Gotoku Ishin!