The Anglo-Satsuma War: From the Road at Namamugi to Gunfire in Kagoshima Bay

In 1863, the Satsuma domain and a British fleet exchanged gunfire in Kagoshima Bay. Ships afloat faced coastal batteries. Yet following the origins of this confrontation takes us back to the Tōkaidō road in the preceding year, far from the waters where the fighting would occur.

British people were killed or wounded in an incident at Namamugi village. Demands for compensation followed, and the shogunate and Satsuma responded differently. The shogunate’s response did not settle every negotiation. A fleet eventually pressed the demands directly upon Satsuma, bringing the dispute into the bay.

Seeing a line running naturally from the incident to bombardment obscures the demands and responses in between. Who was asked to do what? Where did discussion continue? What action became the immediate occasion for fighting? These questions make the intervening sequence visible instead of treating war as an automatic consequence.

This article follows the road incident, the fleet’s arrival, seizure of ships, bombardment and negotiations afterward. Considering damage to the castle town and factories alongside losses in the fleet, it reads a conflict whose course cannot be contained in a single declaration of victory or defeat.

The Namamugi Incident occurred on September 14, 1862, or the twenty-first day of the eighth month of Bunkyū 2 in the calendar then used in Japan. The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records supplies both dates. Month-and-day labels in the Bunkyū era retain that historical calendar throughout this article.

The location was Namamugi village, in what is now Yokohama’s Tsurumi Ward. JACAR’s explanation describes Hisamitsu’s party encountering four British riders and domain retainers attacking them with swords. The merchant Richardson died, and two others were seriously wounded. Those consequences belong at the center of the incident’s account.

Reading an explanation of the encounter with the procession is different from treating the killing and injuries as justified. Before moving toward negotiations or war, the account should retain the fact that a person lost his life and others were wounded. The later diplomatic sequence does not remove those human consequences.

A Tsurumi Ward webpage introduces the Namamugi Incident monument, which mourns Richardson’s death. It also provides evidence of how the incident was remembered afterward. This article does not reproduce its inscription or the institutional photographs, and does not expand into uncertain details of the place-name’s origin or the monument’s construction date.

Reimeikan describes a British fleet of seven ships arriving at Kagoshima. Its introduction to Admiral Kuper’s journal identifies Euryalus as the flagship and places the fleet at anchor off Hirakawa on the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month of Bunkyū 3. This is one stage of the arrival sequence.

The introduction to orders concerning the war gives arrival at Maenohama on the twenty-eighth day of the sixth month. There is no need to erase one of the two dates. The places named and the stages from arrival in the bay to subsequent movement should be examined alongside the dates.

These sixth-month dates belong to the calendar then used in Japan. They should not be read as Gregorian June dates and placed directly alongside the later Gregorian August 15 opening of the fighting. A change in calendar labeling must not quietly become a change in the sequence of events.

The seven ships also represented force behind the demands. Their arrival, however, did not instantly eliminate exchanges by envoys. There was still time for negotiation before the gunfire. Keeping that interval visible helps distinguish the presence of a fleet from the commencement of an artillery battle.

The artillery battle began on August 15, 1863, the second day of the seventh month of Bunkyū 3. JACAR identifies the British seizure of Satsuma steamships as the immediate occasion for the fighting. The paired date anchors this point in both calendars without converting every other date by assumption.

Reimeikan’s journal introduction gives the number of captured domain ships as three. It describes Satsuma’s batteries opening fire in response, followed by the British fleet’s bombardment. The action of taking control of the ships and the exchange of fire between land and sea should be followed in that order.

The same introduction describes fierce fighting in bad weather. That brief explanation does not establish the precise bearing of every vessel or the instant at which a particular shot struck. The article’s ships and coastal scenes are also imaginative illustrations rather than exact reconstructions of the actual vessels.

A fleet pressing demands, ships being seized and batteries firing: following these actions one by one reveals more than an exchange of shots existing from the outset. The gap in negotiations was followed by coercive action and the spread of fighting. The sequence gives each stage a place in the account.

The British fleet also suffered deaths and injuries. JACAR’s explanation mentions losses including Josling, captain of the flagship Euryalus. Listing the capabilities of ships is not enough to convey the human cost incurred aboard them. That cost remains part of the outcome alongside damage on shore.

Reimeikan’s journal introduction gives thirteen British dead and more than fifty wounded. This article treats those as figures in the introduction consulted here. They are not presented as a combined tally of all losses on both sides, nor as an independent recount of every casualty in the original journal.

Losses in the fleet do not by themselves establish an unqualified Satsuma victory. Conversely, the burning of the castle town alone cannot fully explain what remained after the conflict. Different measures of damage reveal different parts of the result, and a single label can conceal that complexity.

Ships and town, combat and negotiation: shifting the object of attention reveals different aspects of the fighting’s consequences. Rather than searching only for a victorious side, the account asks what each side lost and how it responded afterward. Loss and subsequent action both need to be considered.

Satsuma’s interest in technology cannot be made to begin with the Anglo-Satsuma War alone. Kagoshima City’s leaflet describes Shimazu Nariakira, who became lord in 1851, advancing the Shūseikan undertaking. That earlier chronology matters when considering how the conflict affected work already under way.

Western technical books were translated and their contents tested in combination with Japanese techniques. Factories and research facilities were established before the war. Following Nariakira’s death in 1858, the undertaking was temporarily reduced in scale. War then became a further turning point in this existing history.

The same leaflet introduces the sending of students overseas and invitation of technical specialists afterward. It dates the surviving Shūseikan machinery factory to 1865 and the Kagoshima spinning mill to 1867. The stone factory standing today should not simply be substituted for a facility as it stood before the war.

Considering both the earlier work and methods that changed afterward makes the adoption of technology following the gunfire more intelligible. It was not an activity suddenly beginning where nothing had existed. It can instead be read as a continuing undertaking that had suffered loss and proceeded through changed circumstances.