The of 1837 occurred when the American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 merchant ship, Morrison headed by Charles W. King

Charles W. King

Charles W. King was an American merchant in Canton, China, who is famous for having tried to open trade with Japan on the pretext of repatriating seven Japanese castaways, among them Otokichi, to their homeland in 1837 in the Morrison Incident....

, was driven away from "sakoku

Sakoku

was the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner could enter nor could any Japanese leave the country on penalty of death. The policy was enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1633–39 and remained in effect until...

" (isolationist) Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 by cannon fire. This was carried out in accordance with the Japanese Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels

Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels

The was a law passed by the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1825 to the effect that all foreign vessels should be driven away from Japanese waters.An example of the law being put into practice was the Morrison Incident of 1837, in which a merchant ship bearing Japanese citizens was fired upon.The law was...

 of 1825.

History

In addition to its commercial aims, the ship had been attempting to repatriate seven shipwrecked Japanese citizens who had been picked up in Macau

Macau

Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...

. It also carried Christian missionaries such as Samuel Wells Williams

Samuel Wells Williams

Samuel Wells Williams was a linguist, missionary and Sinologist from the United States in the early 19th century.-Biography:...

.

The nature of the ship's mission became known one year after the event, and this resulted in increased criticism of the Edict.