Top Japanese Academic to give Lunchtime Lecture on Thomas Blake Glover

							        Top Japanese Academic to give Lecture on Thomas Blake Glover


One of Japan’s leading economic history academics, Professor Masami Kita, will be
visiting Aberdeen on Thursday 1st September to deliver a public lecture at The
Robert Gordon University on Thomas Blake Glover, one of the founding fathers of
modern Japan.


Born in Fraserburgh, Glover spent much of his youth living in Bridge of Don,
Aberdeen, before beginning work for a trading company and travelling the world.
Glover eventually settled in Nagasaki in the 1860s, where his house remains the
oldest western style building in Japan and is now Western Japan’s top tourist
attraction.

Glover is acknowledged as a driving force behind the industrialisation of Japan,
introducing the first railway locomotive to the country and establishing their first
mechanised coal mine. In addition, Glover established his own shipbuilding company
which later grew into the industrial giant Mitsubishi.


Professor Kita is a Professor of Economics at SOKA University in Tokyo, Japan, and
has strong links with Scotland having carried out research at the University of
Glasgow. In 2002, he was appointed as a representative of Friends of Scotland by
His Excellency the Ambassador for Japan.

Professor Kita’s lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place at
12:30pm on Thursday 1st September in Room 225 of Aberdeen Business School, on
RGU’s Garthdee campus. Places can be reserved by contacting Barbara Jones at
RGU on 01224 262034.

ENDS                                                           19 August 2005