Namamugi Incident

The Namamugi Incident depicted in a 19th-century Japanese woodcut print with Charles Lennox Richardson at the centre of the scene.

The Namamugi incident (生麦事件, Namamugi-jiken), also known as the Kanagawa incident and Richardson affair, was a political crisis that occurred in the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan during the Bakumatsu on 14 September 1862. Charles Lennox Richardson, a British merchant, was killed by the armed retinue of Shimazu Hisamitsu, the regent of the Satsuma Domain, on a road in Namamugi near Kawasaki.

Richardson's killing sparked outrage among Europeans for violating their extraterritoriality in Japan, while the Japanese argued Richardson had disrespected Shimazu and was justifiably killed under the Kiri-sute gomen rule. British demands for compensation and failure by the Satsuma to respond resulted in the Bombardment of Kagoshima (or Anglo-Satsuma War) in August 1863.