[[Image:NamamugiIncident.jpg|thumb|350px|The '''Namamugi Incident''', as depicted in a [[19th century]] Japanese woodcut print. [[Charles Lennox Richardson]] is at the centre of the scene.]]
The {{nihongo|'''Namamugi Incident'''|生麦事件|Namamugi Jiken}} (also known sometimes as the '''Kanagawa Incident''', and archaically as the '''Richardson Affair''') was a [[samurai]] attack on foreign nationals in [[Japan]] on [[September 14]], [[1862]], which resulted in the bombardment of [[Kagoshima]] in [[1863]]. In Japanese the bombardment is described as a war between the [[United Kingdom]] and the [[Satsuma han|Satsuma domain]], the so-called [[Anglo-Satsuma War]] (Satsu-Ei Senso).

==Course of events==
Four British subjects (a [[Shanghai]] merchant named [[Charles Lennox Richardson]], two other men named Clark and Marshall, and Mrs. Borrodaile) were travelling on the [[Tōkaidō]] road through the village of Namamugi (now part of [[Tsurumi-ku, Yokohama|Tsurumi ward]], [[Yokohama]]) en route to a shrine in present-day [[Kawasaki, Kanagawa|Kawasaki]]. As they passed through the village, the [[daimyo]] of Satsuma, [[Shimazu Hisamitsu]], passed through in the other direction with a thousand-man contingent of guards. The Britons did not dismount when ordered to do so, as was the custom when a daimyo passed by in Japan, and were attacked for disrespecting Shimazu. Richardson was killed and the two other men were seriously wounded (Mrs Borrodaile was not harmed). Richardson's grave is entombed in Yokohama at [[The Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery]].

==Consequences of the Namamugi Incident==
[[Image:NamamugiVillage.JPG|thumb|300px|Entrance to the village of Namamugi, circa 1862.]]
The incident sparked a scare in Japan's foreign community, which was based in the ''Kannai'' district of Yokohama. Many traders appealed to their governments to take punitive action against Japan. Britain engaged Satsuma a year later in the [[Anglo-Satsuma War]], a naval bombardment of [[Kagoshima, Kagoshima|Kagoshima]] which claimed 5 lives among the people of Satsuma, 13 lives among the British (including, with a single cannon shot, the Captain and the Commander of the British flagship [[HMS Euryalus (1853)|HMS Euryalus]]).<ref>The British victims were caused by Satsuma cannonry as well as accidents due to the usage of [[Rifled Breech Loader|Breech-loading gun]]s developed by the English engineer [[William George Armstrong]]</ref> Material losses were important, with around 500 houses burnt in Kagoshima, and three Satsuma steamships destroyed. The conflict caused much controversy in the British House of Commons.

==Notes==
<references/>

== References ==
* See the account of the incident in Chapter V, ''A Diplomat in Japan'' by Sir [[Ernest Satow]], London, 1921. (Tuttle paperback reprint, ISBN 4-925080-28-8)

* The incident was the basis of [[James Clavell]]'s novel ''[[Gai-Jin (novel)|Gai-Jin]]''.

== See also ==
*[[Anglo-Japanese relations]]
*[[Anglo-Satsuma War]]

== External links ==
*[http://www.yoke.city.yokohama.jp/echo/0303/h.html A historical account]

[[Category:History of the foreign relations of Japan]]
[[Category:Edo period]]
[[Category:Yokohama]]
[[Category:Diplomatic incidents]]
[[Category:Diplomatic incidents in Japan]]

[[de:Namamugi-Zwischenfall]]
[[es:Incidente de Namamugi]]
[[ja:生麦事件]]