May 18, 2012 - 1 min read

Nagasaki Sakamoto Foreign Cemetery

Eternal sleep in Japan's oldest foreign community

By Larry Knipfing

Community writer

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Gravestones here go back a few hundred years.

Nagasaki once supported a large Jewish community.

The cemetery is tucked into a small plot of land in a quiet neighborhood.

What was it like to live and die here, so far away from home?

The most famous person buried here is Scottish merchant Thomas B. Glover. Glover came to Japan in 1859 and lived here for more than 50 years.

The foreign community included both rich and poor from dozens of countries.

Many of the gravestones include inscriptions in Hebrew.

I love to visit cemeteries when I visit new places. There is something old and beautiful about them that tells you a lot about the local history and its people. Nagasaki includes Japan's oldest foreign community. Miraculously, this cemetery surrvived the atomic bombing of 1945. There is a Christian plot area here as well as a Jewish plot area. And in another part of the city, there is a large Chinese cemetery as well, mixed in with the very large and unique Buddhist cemetery.