Bombardment of Kagoshima - Background

Background

Following the Namamugi Incident on September 14, 1862, Lieutenant-Colonel Neale, the British Chargé d'Affaires, demanded from the bakufu an apology and a huge indemnity for the Namamugi outrage of £100,000 ($440,000 in Mexican silver dollars), representing roughly 1/3 of the total revenues of the Bakufu for one year. Neale kept threatening a naval bombardment of Edo if the payment was not made. Britain also demanded of the Satsuma domain the arrest and trial of the perpetrators of the outrage, and £25,000 compensation for the surviving victims and the relatives of Charles Lennox Richardson.

The Bakufu (Japanese central government), led by Ogasawara Nagamichi in the absence of the Shogun who was in Kyoto, eager to avoid trouble with European powers, negotiated with France and Great Britain on July 2, 1863, on board the French warship Sémiramis, apologized and paid the indemnity to the British authorities. Participating in the settlement were the main French and British political and navy representatives of the time: Duchesne de Bellecourt the French Minister in Japan, Lieutenant-Colonel Neale the Chargé d'affaires of Great Britain, Admiral Jaurès and Admiral Kuper.

Satsuma Province however refused to apologize, to pay the compensation of 25,000 pounds demanded by the British, or to convict and execute the two Japanese samurai responsible for the murder, arguing that disrespect to the Daimyō was normally sanctioned by the immediate death of those showing disrespect. Legally, their claim was invalid in this case, as foreigners in Japan benefited from extraterritoriality due to Japan's reluctant acceptance of what the Japanese called the Unequal treaties with Europe. Japanese customary law did not apply to foreigners. Furthermore, politically, Satsuma could not be seen as submitting to European demands in the very anti-colonial context at that time in Japan.

Great Britain, however, wished to make a point against anti-foreign outrages in Japan. Other anti-foreign troubles were occurring throughout the country at the same time, reinforced by Emperor Kōmei's 1863 "Order to expel barbarians". The European powers chose to react militarily to such exactions: the straits of Shimonoseki had already seen attacks on American, Dutch and French ships passing through, each of which had brought retaliation from those countries, with the U.S. frigate USS Wyoming under Captain McDougal, the Dutch warship Medusa under Kapitein de Casembroot, and the two French warships Tancrède and the Dupleix under Captain Benjamin Jaurès attacking the mainland. Eventually, on 14 August 1863, a multinational fleet under Admiral Kuper and the Royal Navy commenced the Bombardment of Shimonoseki to prevent further attacks on western shipping there. They succeeded.