The Holme Ringer & Co. was a trading company established by Frederic Ringer, a British trader, in Nagasaki in 1868.

Frederic Ringer was working in China as a specialist in tea trade in the mid-19th century.  Hired by The Glover & Co., a British trading company in Nagasaki, which is well known for selling a variety of western weapons to anti-Tokugawa regimes at that time, he moved to Nagasaki to be the person in charge of tea trading of the company.  In 1868, he retired the company to establish his own company named The Holme Ringer & Co. together with his colleague.  He started tea trading first then extended the business area to the trade of coal, weapons, oil and industrial machinery in line with Japan’s modernization.  His company was handed over to his son after his death in 1909, but the company was obliged to be shut down due to imminent deteriorating relations between Japan and UK.  The pretty building in the photo is The Holme Ringer & Co. in Moji-ko, Fukuoka Prefecture.  The name of the company is the same as the original one, but the present one was established by the employees of the original one after the Second World War.  These two companies are different from each other.  The present one is not a trading company but an agency for port entry and clearance formalities, cargo handling arrangement, insurance and the like. 

For your information, Frederic Ringer’s old house still stands on the hilltop of Nagasaki together with the old houses of Tomas Glover and Wiliam Alt as they were in the mid-19th century.  They usually overlooked a fine view of Nagasaki Bey as Madame Butterfly might do the same while singing a famous aria.

http://tour-guide-japan.jp/