Namamugi Incident - Course of Events

Course of Events

Four British subjects (a Shanghai merchant named Charles Lennox Richardson, two Yokohama-based merchants, Woodthorpe Charles Clark and William Marshall, and Mrs. 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 meet up with 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 daimyo 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 Kirisute 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 two other men were seriously wounded (Mrs Borrodaile was not physically 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. Richardson's grave is in Yokohama in a private plot near the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, between the later graves of Marshall and Clarke.

The case of Eugene Van Reed, who had dismounted and bowed before a daimyo's train, was instanced by Shimazu's supporters who later said that the insolent attitude of the Britons (who did not dismount) caused the incident. Van Reed's conduct appalled the Western community, who believed that westerners should hold themselves with dignity before the Japanese, being at least the equal of any Japanese person. There is no evidence to support later suggestions that Richardson whipped Chinese while horseback riding in China, though according to the Japan Herald "Extra" of Tuesday 16 September 1862, he had been heard to say just prior to the incident, "I know how to deal with these people".