Charles Lennox Richardson's death triggered demands directed at both the Tokugawa government and Satsuma. British chargé d'affaires Edward St John Neale demanded an apology and £100,000 from the bakufu, roughly a third of its annual revenue, while threatening to bombard Edo if it refused. Satsuma separately faced a demand for £25,000 and trials for Richardson's killers. The bakufu negotiated aboard a French warship and accepted the apology and payment. Satsuma rejected the apology, payment, and prosecutions on the grounds that its retainers had enforced local samurai privilege. Extraterritorial treaty rights and gunboat diplomacy had turned one death into a crisis that placed enormous financial pressure on Japan's central government.
Notable Point · 51:20-56:50
How the Namamugi incident became an ultimatum
A demand worth about a third of the bakufu's annual revenue and a threat against Edo turned Richardson's death into a crisis of gunboat diplomacy.