A TRAGIC EVENT happened in Hakodate during the month of August [1874]. This was nothing less than the murder of Mr [Ludwig] Haber, the German consul at Hakodate. Mr Haber was living pro tem in the Blakiston, Marr, & Go. house, where I also lived while on shore. Mr Haber, previous to coming to Japan, had been for some years in Central America, where he contracted malaria fever which seemed to come back on him at times in this country. In appearance he was a small, weak man at his best, and he had been laid up for a week or more with this malaria, confined to the house.

It being August and the college summer holidays, one of the professors, a German friend of Mr Haber’s, came to spend his holidays in Hakodate. We were all dining together between 1 and 2 p.m. — the professor and Mr Haber and the rest belonging to the house. In conversation during the meal a difference of opinion occurred between Mr Haber and myself. As the meal was finished, Mr Haber arose laughing, saying that we would settle the argument at tea time. It was a fine day and he and the professor were going for a walk. Having been confined to the house so long by fever [he was weak], but his friend was a big, burly man and would be able to carry him if he broke down.

They started and walked out on the new-made road to the tea houses at Yatsu- gashira, where they rested for some time. Mr Haber felt so well that he suggested to the professor that they should take different roads back, Mr Haber taking the old road, the professor the road they had followed going out, and he said that he would reach the house first. So they separated, according to the professor's account of the parting.

The murderer had come up to Hakodate from Akita prefecture. He was one of those samurai who had sworn to kill foreigners and up to that time in his own country had never come across one he could tackle with a chance of success; at that time few if any foreigners were to be met with in Akita.