Sakai incident

The Sakai incident (堺事件) was the killing of 11 French sailors from the French corvette Dupleix in the port of Sakai near Osaka, Japan in 1868.

On March 8, 1868, a skiff sent to Sakai was attacked by samurai of the Tosa clan; 11 sailors and Midshipman Guillou were killed (a monument in Kobe is now erected to their memory). At the time, the port of Sakai was not open to foreign ships, and the Tosa troops were in charge of policing the city.

The French captain Dupetit Thouars protested so strongly that an indemnity of 150,000 dollars was agreed upon, and 29 troop members who admitted firing shot as well as the troop leaders were sentenced to death by seppuku at Myōkoku-ji. However, fearing that executing all troop members would inflame anti foreign sentiment which were already rife in Japan, the number were reduced to 20 by draw. However, at the execution, indignant samurai threw their own intestines to shock the French who were observing the execution. After 11 performed their own execution, which matched the number of French killed, the French captain requested a pardon, sparing nine of the samurai to banishment instead.

This incident was dramatised in a famous short story, Sakai Jiken, by Mori Ōgai.