Icarus affair
The Icarus affair (イカルス号事件, Ikarusu-gō jiken) was an incident involving the murder of two Royal Navy sailors in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1867, leading to increased diplomatic tensions between the United Kingdom and the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa shogunate. On 5 August Robert Ford and John Hutchings, from the British screw sloop HMS Icarus, were killed by an unknown swordsman in the Marayuma entertainment precinct of Nagasaki, which had been opened to trade and port calls by British ships since the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce of 1858.