It's a little-known twist of history: The Japanese company that made World War II's Zero fighter and today brews Kirin Beer was founded by a canny Scotsman named Thomas Blake Glover.

The "Scottish Samurai" laid down a shipyard in Japan's port of Nagasaki almost 150 years ago that grew into Mitsubishi, an industrial conglomerate that ranks among the world's largest.

One of Japan's great zaibatsu, or industrial combines, prior to World War II, Mitsubishi today is broken into loosely allied businesses involved in heavy industry, trading, carmaking, real estate, banking and chemicals.

Trading company Mitsubishi Corp. reported sales of $41 billion in its March 2006 fiscal year. Industrial maker Mitsubishi Heavy Industries posted nearly $25 billion in sales last year.

Glover stood out among Europeans and Americans who emigrated to Japan in the 19th century thirsting for fame and fortune. They brought business contacts and Western technology — both in demand in a Japan trying to modernize.

His career is a testament to shrewd business acumen, political savvy and a knack for nurturing a company in an alien culture.

His role in seeding Mitsubishi made Glover a national hero in Japan. Some still refer to him as the "father of Japanese industry."

"Glover exemplified the buccaneering spirit of the British merchant," future Japanese statesman Takayoshi Kido wrote in his diary after meeting him in the 1860s.

Glover brought the first steam locomotive to Japan and taught the Japanese to use machines, rather than hands, to mine coal.

Eastward From Scotland

Though Glover in his worst guise was a gunrunner who landed in Japan eager to make a buck, he also had an earnest regard for the people of his adopted land and joined them in the task of nation-building.

Glover was born in 1838, the son of a British navy officer in Fraserburgh, Scotland.

The fifth son in a family of seven boys, he stood to inherit little from his father's estate.

He knew he had to find his own way — and quickly displayed a yen to visit foreign lands.

He also had a talent for forging fast friendships and thinking on his feet.

Rather than emulate his father in a naval career, Glover immersed himself in commerce and was soon traveling as a merchant trader. Guns and iron were the popular wares of his day — especially in the Far East, where China and Japan faced economic and political upheaval stirred by contact with the West.

He landed in Nagasaki in 1859 when he was 21. His first job was buying green tea for British trading house Jardine Matheson.

He soon set up his own business, and he had the right charisma to make it work. His grasp of Japanese and the country's culture made him one of the most influential foreigners in Nagasaki, a city known for its foreign trading community.

He was famous for completing complex projects. He had an eye for detail and knew how to ship cargo from any port in the world.

Glover arrived when rebel provinces in Japan's south sought to overthrow the moldering Tokugawa shogunate and restore imperial rule.

The revolutionaries also wanted to end feudal rule and transform Japan into a modern nation. To win, they needed Western arms to overcome the larger shogunate forces.

Glover always smelled a winner. He realized that Japan's future and a big business opportunity for himself lay with the revolutionaries.

He decided to equip the rebels with the best Western guns and artillery that money could buy.

He made contact with the revolutionaries, signed a series of business deals, and used his contacts in England and elsewhere to order what they needed.

It was an intricate relationship that Glover nurtured using two elements: trust and practicality.

Though he and his clients hailed from different cultures, their needs were close. The samurai needed guns, and Glover needed money.

Glover appealed to the samurai's sense of honor by proving that his word was his bond. He also stuck with his clients after the ruling shogun intervened with the queen of England to halt his arms trade.

He risked his life by coming up with ruses to help the revolutionaries duck the embargo.

"Glover will do everything in his power to buy and load as many guns as we want; he seems to be deeply committed to us on the matter," Kido wrote in a letter to his colleagues on Glover's effort to aid their cause.

Glover had a hand in slipping crates of repeating rifles ashore from foreign ships in the dead of night. The rebellious lords eagerly emptied their treasuries of gold bars to pay Glover and his partners.

The rebels were soon besting the Shogun's armies in every battle with the help of Glover's guns. When the war ended in 1868, the Japanese emperor was reinstated for the first time in over 800 years, feudalism was abolished, and the government began building modern schools, hospitals and factories.

Glover had brought the first railway locomotive to Japan in 1865 while working for Jardine. Government officials soon tapped him for help in modernizing the country.

He founded a Nagasaki-based shipbuilding company and signed a contract with a Japanese clan to open the country's first mechanized coal mine, at Takashima.

Realizing that knowledge and good will in business go together, Glover arranged to have Japanese from the best families educated at British schools, giving Japan a grounding in the statecraft and science of the day. Sojourns at schools like Eaton and Oxford also turned many of Japan's future leaders into confirmed Anglophiles.

The students included Ito Hirobumi, who later asked the emperor to award Glover Japan's highest honor — the Order of the Rising Sun. He was the first non-Japanese to receive the honor.

Glover used his ties to benefit his native Scotland. The Imperial Japanese navy's first warships were built in Scottish shipyards.

Glover and his partners also acquired a failing brewery in the city of Yokohama that had been founded by a Norwegian-American named Johan Martinius Thoresen. The beer maker later became Kirin Brewery Co., the maker of the world's fourth-best-selling beer.

Glover overextended himself and went bankrupt in 1870, opening the way for Japanese businessman Yataro Iwasaki.

Iwasaki later grouped Glover's businesses and others under the Mitsubishi name. Glover's shipyard formed the core of today's Mitsubishi Corp.

Kickin' Back

Glover saved enough from his assets to live comfortably in Japan the rest of his life. He stayed on as a consultant to Mitsubishi Steamship Co.

He married the daughter of a local samurai family who, legend has it, provided the inspiration for Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly" because of the butterflies she wore on her kimono.

Glover is credited with designing the well-known Kirin beer label, which uses the figure of a mythical Chinese beast that is half horse and half dragon.

The beast sports a moustache on its lip, a feature that Kirin execs say honors the whiskered Scotsman.

Glover died in Tokyo in 1911.

BY DOUG TSURUOKA