Etched Sorrow·Rakuchū / Gosho-minami

Where Yokoi Shonan Was Assassinated

Yokoi Shonan (1809-69), a late-Edo thinker who argued for opening Japan to the world, is said to have been cut down here by several assassins on February 15, 1869, on his way back from an audience at the Imperial Palace, at a point on Teramachi-dori below Marutamachi. He was sixty-one by the traditional Japanese age count. He was reportedly suspected of aiming to Christianize Japan, though the full circumstances of the attack remain unresolved (accounts vary). The present stone marker is a 1932 rebuilding, by the Kyoto City Board of Education, of one first erected in the Taisho era.

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These notes come from desk research. Local traditions vary.