Mudan Incident (1871)

Mudan Incident
Location	Formosa, Taiwan under Qing rule (Taiwan Prefecture, Fujian Province, Qing dynasty)
Date	1871
Attack type	massacre
Deaths	54
Victim	Ryukyuan people who wandered into Taiwan whose ship carrying tribute to Shuri shipwrecked
Perpetrators	Paiwan Formosans

The Mudan incident of 1871 was the massacre of 54 Ryūkyūan sailors in Qing-era Taiwan who wandered into the central part of Taiwan after their ship was shipwrecked. 12 men were rescued by Han Chinese and were transferred to Miyako. Japan sent a military force to Taiwan in the Taiwan Expedition of 1874 in retaliation for the murdered Ryukyuan sailors, in retailiation for what Japan viewed as the murder of their citizens by rebellious aboriginal peoples out of the control but in the dominion of the failing Qing dynasty.

On October 18, 1871, four ships which had carried the poll tax to the Ryūkyū Kingdom started from Naha for their homeland. They met a violent typhoon and one ship disappeared, one ship sailed safely, and two ships were shipwrecked; one reached the eastern tip of Taiwan on November 6. Another ship reached the western part of Taiwan and this one was safe.

There were 66 people who landed on November 6, at the eastern tip of present-day Manzhou, Pingtung in southern Taiwan, but three people who landed in a hurry died during landing. They began traveling in difficult conditions for safety. According to two survivors, they reached the Mudan community (Chinese: 牡丹社; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Bó͘-tan-siā) on November 8 and were ordered to stay there by the local Paiwan people; there 66 men and women had some doubts and on November 9, tried to escape. That is when the massacre began; 12 survivors were rescued by local people and stayed there for 40 plus several days, in the house of Yang Youwang. They returned via Taiwan-fu (modern-day Tainan) and Fuzhou, Fujian and they came back to Miyako. The distance of their wandering was roughly 100 km, across a map. The place of the massacre was known as Mudan (雙溪口).

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