Namamugi incident

The Namamugi Incident (生麦事件, Namamugi-jiken^?) (also known sometimes as the Kanagawa Incident, and as the Richardson Affair) was a samurai assault on British people in Japan on September 14, 1862, which occurred six days after Ernest Satow set foot on Japanese soil for the first time. Failure by the Satsuma clan to respond to British demands for compensation resulted in the August 1863 bombardment of Kagoshima, during the Late Tokugawa shogunate. In Japanese the bombardment is described as a war between the United Kingdom and Satsuma Domain, the Anglo-Satsuma War (satsu-ei sensō).

Four British subjects (a Shanghai merchant named Charles Lennox Richardson, two Yokohama-based merchants, Woodthorpe Charles Clark and William Marshall, and Margaret Watson Borradaile) were travelling for a jaunt on the Tōkaidō road through the village of Namamugi (now part of Tsurumi ward, Yokohama) en route to Kawasaki Daishi temple in present-day Kawasaki. The party had departed the treaty port of Yokohama at 2:30 pm by boat, crossing Yokohama harbour to Kanagawa village, to join their horses, which had been sent ahead.

As they passed north through Namamugi village, they encountered the large, armed retinue of Shimazu Hisamitsu, the regent and father of Shimazu Tadayoshi, the daimyō of Satsuma, heading in the other direction. The party continued to ride along the side of the road without dismounting until they reached the main body of the procession, which occupied the entire width of the road. In Japan, samurai had a legal right to strike anyone who showed disrespect (See kiri-sute gomen). However, British nationals were protected by Extraterritoriality under the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty and were exempt. Richardson, leading the Britons, rode too close to the procession and did not dismount despite being gestured repeatedly to do so, and was slashed at by one of the Satsuma bodyguards. The other two men were seriously wounded (Mrs. Borrodaile was not harmed), and they rode away as fast as they could, Richardson eventually falling from his horse, mortally wounded. Hisamitsu gave the order for todome—the coup de grâce—to be given. Several samurai proceeded to hack and stab at Richardson with swords and lances. A post-mortem examination of his body showed ten mortal wounds. Richardson's grave is to be found in the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, between the later graves of Marshall and Clarke. Japanese reports later accused Richardson of continuing to ride in the middle of the road, even trying to get between Hisamitsu's litter and his bodyguards. Richardson's uncle was reportedly not surprised about his nephew's demise, but blamed him for being reckless and stubborn. Frederick Wright-Bruce, the British envoy to China, remembered Richardson as an arrogant adventurer.

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