IN MID-DECEMBER, 1863, a line of wooden carts rattled up to the entrance of the British Legation at Yokohama. They were laden with gifts from Satsuma for Admiral Kuper, Colonel Neale and the British consular staff; ‘great boxes of oranges’ for the Royal Navy's bluejackets; and an indemnity of 100,000 Mexican dollars for the death of Charles Lenox Richardson. While the carts were unloaded in the courtyard and the payment was counted out, Neale was handed a note from the Satsuma envoys – countersigned by the bakufu – pledging to continue the search for Richardson's murderers. In light of what had transpired at Kagoshima, discussion turned to Satsuma's request for British help in purchasing a modern warship of their own. In this cordial atmosphere, and with the indemnity received in full, Neale had the satisfaction of reporting to Russell ‘by this occasion the final accomplishment of my instructions’ (pl. 21). For him, with evident relief, it marked the end of the Richardson affair.

It was not, of course; history is seldom so straightforward. The emotions stirred up on all sides would ensure that memories of Richardson's murder and of the course of British vengeance would echo down the years. Yet the Richardson affair – and Richardson himself – have been remembered in profoundly different ways by different constituencies. The outrage that had coursed through the debates of the day left a schizophrenic impression of events and of the man, with positive and negative impressions formed in the heat of the moment shaping our responses ever since. Nor would the affair be remembered equally. While a particular narrative of events became increasingly prominent in Japan, alternate and more local versions lost out. In Britain, the story soon lapsed from view, only to be rewritten in curious and unexpected ways later in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.