In 1853, Russian, American and British visitors to Japan all demonstrated live-steam railway locomotives. The authorities of that time, the Shoguns ruling in the Emperor’s name, were strongly opposed to allowing their country to be industrialised by foreigners, but railway enthusiast Thomas Glover, a Scotsman who had made Nagasaki his home, secretly aided rebels to overthrow them.

Glover’s campaign to help pro-Imperial rebels was rewarded in 1869, when the Emperor regained power, and immediately gave the go-ahead for the building Japan’s first railway, from Tokyo to Yokohama. It opened in 1872, a symbol of a new era in Japan’s industrial progress, and of the peculiarly British character of her constitution.

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