Visit to the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse
2025/6/28
On 28 June, Cultural Consul Masataka Abe accompanied Mayumi Arita, Special Assistant to the Director of the Maritime Traffic Department of the Japan Coast Guard, on a business trip to the Mull of Galloway Lighthouse, at Scotland’s most Southerly Point.
On 21st November 2024, a memorandum of cooperation was signed for The Mull of Galloway Lighthouse to become a twinned lighthouse to Inubosaki Lighthouse in Chōshi city, Chiba Prefecture, which was the world’s first officially “twinned lighthouse” partnership. It is expected that the lighthouses will hold mutual exhibitions of photos and videos related to their histories and contributions from Scottish engineer Richard Henry Brunton, who designed many lighthouses in Japan. People from the two countries will also visit the other country’s lighthouse to exchange information.
Both lighthouses have Scottish engineers, and the relationship between the two started when “Japan’s father of lighthouses” and designer of Inubosaki Lighthouse Richard Henry Brunton received technical training at Stevenson office, managed by Mull of Galloway Lighthouse designer Robert Stevenson, before visiting Japan.
This visit was the first since the twinned lighthouse partnership was formed, and the delegation was shown around by Gillian Burns, Navigation Officer of the Northern Lighthouse Board, and Barry Miller, Retained Lighthouse Keeper Ayr & Galloway. They also exchanged opinions with members of the Mull of Galloway Trust, who are responsible for tours and the exhibitions, about panels for future mutual exhibitions.
The exhibition facility has already showed a screening about Inubosaki Lighthouse, and it is hoped that the relationship between these two lighthouses will inspire new connections between lighthouses in Scotland and Japan in the future.
For more information about the “twinned lighthouse” partnership, please see the Japan Coast Guard’s press release and the Mull of Galloway website below.
https://www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/info/kouhou/post-1151.html (Only Japanese)
https://mull-of-galloway.co.uk
On 21st November 2024, a memorandum of cooperation was signed for The Mull of Galloway Lighthouse to become a twinned lighthouse to Inubosaki Lighthouse in Chōshi city, Chiba Prefecture, which was the world’s first officially “twinned lighthouse” partnership. It is expected that the lighthouses will hold mutual exhibitions of photos and videos related to their histories and contributions from Scottish engineer Richard Henry Brunton, who designed many lighthouses in Japan. People from the two countries will also visit the other country’s lighthouse to exchange information.
Both lighthouses have Scottish engineers, and the relationship between the two started when “Japan’s father of lighthouses” and designer of Inubosaki Lighthouse Richard Henry Brunton received technical training at Stevenson office, managed by Mull of Galloway Lighthouse designer Robert Stevenson, before visiting Japan.
This visit was the first since the twinned lighthouse partnership was formed, and the delegation was shown around by Gillian Burns, Navigation Officer of the Northern Lighthouse Board, and Barry Miller, Retained Lighthouse Keeper Ayr & Galloway. They also exchanged opinions with members of the Mull of Galloway Trust, who are responsible for tours and the exhibitions, about panels for future mutual exhibitions.
The exhibition facility has already showed a screening about Inubosaki Lighthouse, and it is hoped that the relationship between these two lighthouses will inspire new connections between lighthouses in Scotland and Japan in the future.
For more information about the “twinned lighthouse” partnership, please see the Japan Coast Guard’s press release and the Mull of Galloway website below.
https://www.kaiho.mlit.go.jp/info/kouhou/post-1151.html (Only Japanese)
https://mull-of-galloway.co.uk