The Namamugi Incident, 1862: A Chapter in Anglo-Japanese Relations
Just over a hundred years ago, writes William Watson, an unprovoked attack on a party of inoffensive Westerners was followed by violent reprisals.
Namamugi, formerly a village on the Tokaido highway leading from Tokyo to Kyoto, surrounded by rice-fields, is now engulfed in the rambling suburbs of Yokohama. It was the scene a century ago of the murder of an Englishman by a samurai, a two-sworded retainer of a daimyo, or feudal prince. The consequences of this event produced a capital crisis for the Japanese Government and provided for the China squadron of the British navy the occasion for a classic piece of gunboat diplomacy.
For the first time Japanese territory was bombarded by the guns of a foreign power. With some Gilbertian irony, the internal Japanese politics of the time determined that the attacked should soon come to contemplate the action with little less satisfaction than the attackers.
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