Richard Henry Brunton
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Richard Henry Brunton (December 26, 1841 - April 24, 1901) FRGS from Scotland was the so-called "Father of Japanese lighthouses". He was born in the Coastguard House (now 11 Marine Terrace) at Muchalls, Fetteresso in Kincardineshire.
Brunton also contributed to the waterworks and harbour design in Yokohama, where he is remembered by a commemorative statue.
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[edit] Japan
Brunton was an o-yatoi gaikokujin (hired foreigner) employed by the Meiji government. Over seven and a half years he designed and supervised the building of 26 Japanese lighthouses in the Western style. (There had been Japanese lighthouses before then, but they were short and squat buildings, such as the old Shirasu lighthouse now in the grounds of Kokura castle in Kitakyushu.)
After training as a railway engineer he joined the Stevenson brothers (David and Thomas Stevenson) who were engaged by the British government to build lighthouses.
He came to Japan in August 1868 with his wife and two assistants and was the Chief Lighthouse Engineer after being recommended to the Japanese government by the Stevensons. The system of lighthouse keepers which he established was modelled on the Northern Lighthouse Board in Scotland. He returned to the UK after his dismissal in March 1876.
Brunton later received a prize for his paper "Japan Lights".
[edit] Memoir
Brunton wrote a memoir of his time in Japan, titled Pioneer Engineering in Japan: A Record of Work in helping to Re-Lay the Foundations of Japanese Empire (1868-1876). However, it was not published until the 1990s, when it was printed by separate publishers under two different names: Building Japan 1868-1876 and Schoolmaster to an Empire: Richard Henry Brunton in Meiji Japan, 1868-1876. The former, containing the text (with some modified spellings) as edited by William Elliot Griffis at the turn of the twentieth century, contains plates with photos and illustrations. The latter however, purports to be based on a manuscript predating the heavy editing of Griffis, while retaining updated versions of Griffis's footnotes.
[edit] Brunton's Lights
The names of the 26 lighthouses (Brunton's "children") in order of their first illumination and the names of their present locations after mergers of towns etc. are [list to be completed from Japanese wikipedia entry for Brunton]:
Tenpozan, Osaka, illuminated October 1, 1872
Wadamisaki, Kobe, illuminated October 1, 1872, extinguished in 1963. Lighthouse built according to Osaka treaty,
Shirasu, now in Kitakyushu, illuminated September 1, 1873
Inubohsaki, Choshi, illuminated November 15, 1874
Haneda, now in Ota ward, Tokyo, illuminated March 15, 1875. Now extinguished.
Tsunoshima, now in Shimonoseki, illuminated March 1, 1876
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Building Japan 1868-1876 by Richard Henry Brunton with an introduction by Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library Limited, 1991, ISBN 1-873410-05-0
- Schoolmaster to an Empire by R. Henry Brunton, edited by Edward R. Beauchamp, Greenwood Press, 1991, ISBN 0-313-27795-8
[edit] External links
- Richard Henry Brunton from a blog by a namesake
