Dannoura to the Treaty of Shimonoseki: A Strait Town in History

Published:2026-09-29 ／ Last updated:2026-10-01

Original pixel-art landscape illustrating Shimonoseki: history and heritage

The sea where the Taira clan fell, the sea where Choshu fought foreign warships, the waterfront where the Sino-Japanese War was settled. Trace Japanese history on a timeline and the name of this strait keeps coming up at every turning point.

A narrow channel every ship has to pass, and a harbor where crews could wait out wind and tide. That position made Shimonoseki a natural site for battles and negotiations, and a natural gathering place for people and cargo.

Until 1902 the city was called Akamagaseki, and its waters saw three turning points: Dannoura in 1185, the anti-foreign attacks and Shimonoseki War of 1863-64, and the peace talks of 1895. Buildings and festivals in Karato and Chofu still carry that history.

The sea of Dannoura and the shrine for a child emperor

The Taira clan fell at Dannoura on the 24th day of the third lunar month of 1185. Akama Shrine enshrines Emperor Antoku, who drowned there; it began as a temple, Amidaji.

Emperor Antoku

81st emperor; grandson of Taira no Kiyomori

A grandson of Taira no Kiyomori, the child emperor was eight by Japanese count when he entered the strait with the Taira clan. According to Akama Shrine’s history, in 1191 the court ordered a mausoleum built in Nagato Province, and a memorial hall went up over the tomb. That hall became the temple Amidaji, and Amidaji became today’s Akama Shrine.

Source:Akama Shrine: History

Nii no Ama

Kiyomori’s widow and Antoku’s grandmother

The Tale of the Heike has Nii no Ama (Taira no Tokiko) take the boy in her arms and say that there is a capital beneath the waves before she goes into the sea. The Azuma Kagami, however, names a different court lady as the one who held the emperor. The details differ from book to book, and that gap is part of how Dannoura is remembered.

Source:Akama Shrine: HistoryBattle of Dannoura (supplementary)

Akama Shrine

Suitenmon Gate, Hoichi Hall and a scorched scroll

The Suitenmon gate facing the water was designed on the model of the dragon-king’s palace in The Tale of the Heike, in a style called ryugu-zukuri, and became a nationally registered tangible cultural property in 2018. The ghost story of Hoichi the Earless, which Lafcadio Hearn retold in Kwaidan, is set at the predecessor temple Amidaji, and Hoichi Hall stands in the precinct. A copy of the Nagato-bon Tale of the Heike in the treasure hall was scorched in a July 1945 air raid and finished restoration in 1950, the first cultural-property restoration after the war.

Source:Yamaguchi Cultural Properties: Suitenmon GateAkama Shrine: Precinct guideEncyclopedia of the Shrine Museum: Akama Shrine

Nanamori-zuka

Graves of fourteen Taira commanders

The name suggests seven, but the tombstones number fourteen: seven in the front row and seven in the back. The front row carries Norimori, Tomomori, Tsunemori, Noritsune, Sukemori, Kiyotsune and Arimori; the back row includes Nii no Ama, Taira no Tokiko. The graves of a defeated clan still line the shore of the sea where the battle was fought.

Source:Akama Shrine: Precinct guide

Senteisai: how a memorial rite became the town’s biggest festival

Senteisai runs for three days from 2 May, the date the Meiji calendar reform assigned to the anniversary of Emperor Antoku’s death (24th of the third lunar month). Its highlight is the Joro Sanpai procession on 3 May.

Senteisai

2 to 4 May at Akama Shrine

“Sentei” means the late emperor, Antoku. The anniversary falls on the 24th of the third lunar month, which the Meiji calendar reform fixed as 2 May. The festival opens with a rite before his tomb on 2 May, continues with the Joro Sanpai on the 3rd and a shrine procession on the 4th (the street procession has not been held in recent years). It is the core of the Shimonoseki Kaikyo Festival, and a saying holds that the town’s prosperity depends on this festival.

Source:Akama Shrine: Senteisai FestivalSenteisai (supplementary)

Joro Sanpai

3 May, crossing a bridge in the “outer figure-eight” step

Five court-lady figures cross a bridge built in the grounds using the soto-hachimonji step, then bow before the deity, followed by attendants, guards and children in a long line. The shrine traces it to the women of the Taira court who survived the battle. They are said to have sold mountain flowers to sailors in the port to make a living, and on each anniversary they dressed formally and kept praying.

Source:Akama Shrine: Senteisai Festival

From cannon fire to the Kiheitai and the Kozanji uprising, 1863-64

Choshu fired on foreign ships in 1863, was beaten in reprisal, and Takasugi Shinsaku founded the Kiheitai. A four-nation fleet attacked in 1864.

Shimonoseki War

1863-64; the bombardment by four powers

On 25 June 1863 (10 May in the lunar calendar), the day set for expelling foreigners, Choshu fired on the American merchant ship Pembroke passing through the strait, then on French and Dutch vessels. The American warship Wyoming retaliated by sinking or crippling the domain’s ships, and French ships shelled Maeda Battery into silence. The 1864 allied fleet totaled 17 ships: nine British, three French, four Dutch and one American, carrying about 5,000 men. Choshu answered from batteries at a dozen or so sites with a little over 100 guns and fewer than 2,000 troops.

Source:Yamaguchi Prefectural Archives: small exhibition on the 1863 attacksMeiji Restoration history topics: the 1864 bombardment

Maeda Battery and the Choshu guns

A hurried earthwork and a cannon that came home from Paris

Maeda Battery had a low platform about 10 meters above sea level and a high one about 16 meters up. Excavation results and a French sketch map of the time suggest the high platform did not yet exist during the French attack of 1863 and was thrown up hastily for the main battle the next year. The allies carried off 62 guns by British count. One of them, held at the Invalides in Paris, came home on loan and was displayed at the Shimonoseki City Chofu Museum; its inscription names a founder from Hagi.

Source:Meiji Restoration history topics: the 1864 bombardment

Kiheitai

Founded in June 1863 at the Shiraishi house

Right after the defeat by foreign ships, Takasugi Shinsaku formed the Kiheitai at the house of Shiraishi Shoichiro, a wholesale shipping agent in Takezaki. It admitted farmers and townspeople with the will to fight, not only samurai, which was considered groundbreaking. Volunteers soon outgrew the house and its base was set up at Amidaji, today’s Akama Shrine. Takasugi held the top post for only about three months.

Source:Takasugi Shinsaku (Shimonoseki official travel site)Yamaguchi Prefecture feature: Restoration-era ShimonosekiWho was Takasugi Shinsaku?Shunpanro: History

Takasugi Shinsaku

Shanghai in 1862, and a verse tied to Sakurayama

In 1862 Takasugi joined a shogunate trade mission to Shanghai and was shaken to see a city that had become a semi-colony of Western powers. After he returned, the founding of the Kiheitai and the defense of Shimonoseki followed from that experience. On his sickbed he is said to have written that a world without interest should be made interesting, and the poet-nun Nomura Boto to have finished it with a line about the mind. Who wrote which part is not settled, so it is best enjoyed as a tradition.

Source:Takasugi Shinsaku (Shimonoseki official travel site)Who was Takasugi Shinsaku?Yamaguchi Prefecture feature: Restoration-era Shimonoseki

Kozanji Temple

Chofu; the uprising of December 1864

In the twelfth lunar month of 1864 (January 1865 in the Western calendar), Takasugi led about 80 men in revolt at Kozanji in Chofu and is said to have told Sanjo Sanetomi and the other four exiled nobles staying there to watch what men of Choshu could do. The sumo-wrestler unit of Ito Shunsuke, the future Ito Hirobumi, and the Yugekitai joined him. With support from other units, the domain swung toward toppling the shogunate. A statue of Takasugi on horseback stands in the grounds.

Source:Who was Takasugi Shinsaku?Yamaguchi Prefecture feature: Restoration-era ShimonosekiTakasugi Shinsaku (Shimonoseki official travel site)

Sakurayama Shokonjo

A memorial ground that honors people of every rank

The memorial ground at Sakurayama Shrine was founded on Takasugi’s initiative. Yoshida Shoin, Kusaka Genzui and others who worked for the Restoration are enshrined side by side regardless of rank. When it was completed, Takasugi is said to have written a poem lamenting that he had expected to be among those mourned but had become one who mourns.

Source:Yamaguchi Prefecture feature: Restoration-era ShimonosekiTakasugi Shinsaku (Shimonoseki official travel site)

Spring 1895: peace talks in a restaurant-inn

The Sino-Japanese peace conference opened at Shunpanro on 20 March 1895. After seven sessions the Treaty of Shimonoseki was signed on 17 April.

Shunpanro

Venue of the talks; it began as a clinic

The talks took place in the large second-floor hall of this inn in Amidaji-cho. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were also considered, but a week before the conference Ito Hirobumi announced Shimonoseki’s Shunpanro. The building burned in a 1945 air raid and the present main building dates from 1985. Its predecessor was the Getsuharo clinic, opened in 1877 on the former Amidaji grounds by Fujino Genyo, a doctor of Western medicine who had served the lord of Nakatsu; his widow later turned it into a restaurant-inn.

Source:Opening of the Sino-Japanese peace conference (20 March 1895)Signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April 1895)Shunpanro: History

Treaty of Shimonoseki

Signed 17 April 1895

Japan’s plenipotentiaries were Ito Hirobumi and Mutsu Munemitsu; China’s were Li Hongzhang and Li Jingfang. The treaty recognized Korea’s independence, ceded the Liaodong Peninsula, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands, called for an indemnity, and opened four more ports. Six days after signing, Russia, Germany and France urged Japan to give up Liaodong (the Triple Intervention). Japan accepted and signed a retrocession treaty in November, while Taiwan and Penghu stayed with Japan.

Source:National Archives of Japan: 1895 in official recordsNational Archives of Japan: the First Sino-Japanese WarThe First Sino-Japanese War and the peace talks

The shooting of Li Hongzhang

24 March 1895, on the way back

After the third session, Li Hongzhang was heading from Shunpanro to his lodging at Insenji when a man named Koyama Toyotaro (recorded in official papers also as Rokunosuke) shot him, wounding his face. Afterward the Japanese government softened its stance, and an armistice excluding Taiwan and Penghu was signed on 30 March. The wound was not deep, and Li returned to the table at the fifth session on 10 April.

Source:The First Sino-Japanese War and the peace talksSigning of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April 1895)

Ito Hirobumi

Plenipotentiary who chose Shunpanro

Japan’s first prime minister served as chief negotiator and picked Shimonoseki’s Shunpanro as the venue. The inn’s own history says it became a restaurant-inn at Ito’s suggestion. For a man from Choshu, Shimonoseki was familiar ground: he is also said to have joined Takasugi’s uprising in his youth with his sumo-wrestler unit.

Source:Shunpanro: HistoryThe First Sino-Japanese War and the peace talksWho was Takasugi Shinsaku?

Karato’s modern buildings, and two people who left the strait town

Around the Karato intersection stand the Former British Consulate (1906), the Former Akita Shokai Building (1915) and the Kanmon Building (1931), a compact history of architecture.

Former British Consulate in Shimonoseki

1906; two-story brick

The architect was William Cowan, chief architect of the British Office of Works in Shanghai; the link was found in papers held in the UK National Archives. It is built mostly of red brick with stone at key points, and has a south veranda with a row of arches and columns. Stepped gables carry chimneys on three sides. The ground floor held offices for the consul and staff, the upper floor the consul’s residence, and every room has a fireplace. Cowan’s Former British Consulate in Nagasaki also survives and is an Important Cultural Property.

Source:Former British Consulate in ShimonosekiCultural Heritage Online: Former British Consulate in Shimonoseki, Main BuildingJapan Heritage “Kanmon Nostalgic Strait”: Kanmon Building (former Kanmon Kisen)

Former Akita Shokai Building

1915; Western below, Japanese above

At the Karato intersection, alongside the former British Consulate and the Kanmon Building, stands this building, said to be the first steel-reinforced-concrete office building in western Japan. The ground floor is a purely Western-style office, while the second and third floors are tatami rooms with shoji and an alcove; the main hall is 38 mats when its partitions are removed. On the roof, the founder Akita Toranosuke made a Japanese garden and tea room when the building went up, and the prefecture’s publicity page calls it one of the oldest rooftop gardens in Japan. The garden is normally closed to the public.

Source:Yamaguchi Prefecture feature: Former Akita Shokai BuildingCultural Heritage Online: Former Akita Shokai BuildingJapan Heritage “Kanmon Nostalgic Strait”: Kanmon Building (former Kanmon Kisen)

Fujiwara Yoshie

“Our tenor”, and a memorial hall in the former Ringer house

The opera singer was born in 1898 in Naike-cho, Shimonoseki, to a British father and a biwa-playing geisha mother. After years of moving from town to town with his mother, he came to his father in Shimonoseki and left to study in Italy in 1919. The memorial hall occupies a reinforced-concrete residence built in 1936 for Michael Ringer, which became a memorial hall because Yoshie’s father had lived in the Western-style house next door. It is now a registered tangible cultural property, with plain white walls and no ornament.

Source:Notable figures connected to ShimonosekiJapan Heritage “Kanmon Nostalgic Strait”: Fujiwara Yoshie Memorial HallCultural Heritage Online: Former Ringer residence

Tanaka Kinuyo

A great actress born in Shimonoseki

Born in Maruyama-cho, Shimonoseki, on 29 November 1909, she made her film debut in 1924 and became one of the leading actresses of Japanese cinema. The 1938 hit Aizen Katsura restored her popularity with its theme song. In 1975 she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival for Sandakan No. 8. Her life is presented at the Tanaka Kinuyo Cultural Museum (the Shimonoseki Memorial Museum of Modern Forerunners).

Source:About Tanaka KinuyoNotable figures connected to Shimonoseki

Chofu’s lanes and national treasure, a summer festival, a Yayoi village, and Sun Yat-sen’s lotus

Chofu has clay-walled samurai lanes, the national-treasure hall of Kozanji and the summer Suhotei festival. Sumiyoshi Shrine and the Ayaragi site reach back further.

Chofu’s clay walls

Samurai lanes around Furue-koji

In Chofu’s Furue-koji and neighboring lanes, walls of clay kneaded and stacked on stone foundations, called neribei, line the street. Many are left at the middle coat, with no plaster finish. The Chofu Mori domain is said to have issued a rule in the Tenpo era limiting how far its retainers could embellish their houses, and the gates, long houses, stonework and planting behind them give the lanes their character.

Source:Chofu: Furue-koji lane

Kozanji Buddha Hall

A national treasure in Zen style

Kozanji was founded in 1327 by Koan Genjaku and was first called Chofukuji. Its Buddha hall, with a skirt roof, is a textbook Zen-style hall and has been a national treasure since 1953. An inked inscription on an inner pillar dates the raising of the pillars to 1320, which makes the hall look older than the temple itself.

Source:National Cultural Properties Database: Kozanji Buddha HallCultural Heritage Online: Kozanji Buddha Hall

Suhotei Festival

Iminomiya Shrine, 7 to 13 August

Men carry giant bamboo banners 20 to 30 meters long and weighing 60 to 80 kilograms while women hold lanterns called kiriko, and they circle a stone in the shrine grounds. The lanterns are said to recall the women of the coast who lit oil-filled bamboo tubes to welcome Empress Jingu home from Silla. The festival’s own origin is unclear, and several other legends are told, including one about Emperor Chuai and the invader Jinrin. It was designated a prefectural intangible folk cultural property in 1984 and is nicknamed “the strangest festival under heaven”.

Source:Yamaguchi Cultural Properties: Suhotei FestivalIminomiya Shrine: annual events

Sumiyoshi Shrine

Ichinomiya of Nagato; a national-treasure main hall

Counted with Sumiyoshi Taisha in Osaka and Sumiyoshi Shrine in Hakata as one of the “three great Sumiyoshi”, it was the chief shrine of Nagato Province. The main hall was built in 1370 by Ouchi Hiroyo in the kyuken-sha nagare-zukuri style: five single-bay sanctuaries joined by connecting rooms under a roof with five small gables. It was named a national treasure in 1953.

Source:Sumiyoshi Shrine (Shimonoseki)Cultural Heritage Online: Sumiyoshi Shrine Main Hall

Ayaragi Site

Where a Yayoi village meets burial mounds

Yayoi pottery found here has a distinctive shape, so it was named Ayaragi ware and is treated as the pottery that represents the Yayoi period in Yamaguchi. The site park also holds the Wakamiya tumuli, including a 39.7-meter keyhole-shaped mound, so a Yayoi settlement and a burial ground of the mound period overlap on the same land.

Source:Shimonoseki City Archaeological Museum: the road to the sites

Sun Yat-sen lotus

From four seeds given in 1918

In 1918 (Taisho 7) Sun Yat-sen, then living in exile in Japan, thanked a Chofu supporter, Tanaka Takashi, for backing the revolution with a gift of four lotus seeds. In 1960 Tanaka’s fourth son asked the lotus botanist Ohga Ichiro to germinate them, and in 1962 one of the four sprouted at a University of Tokyo facility. Named the “Sun Yat-sen lotus”, it was divided into Chofu Garden in 1994.

Source:長府庭園（下関観光ガイドブック）

FAQ

Where does Dannoura fall in the Genpei War?

It was the last battle of the Genpei War, after Ichinotani in 1184 and Yashima in February 1185. The date is the 24th day of the third lunar month in the fourth year of Juei (1185); the year is also written as Genryaku 2. Both dates are lunar.

How many sessions did the peace conference have, and when did it end?

The first was on 20 March, then 21 March, 24 March, 1 April, 10 April and 15 April, and the seventh on 17 April, when the treaty was signed. The attack on Li Hongzhang left about a week between the third and fourth sessions. The 19th of March was the day the Chinese delegation arrived, not the day talks began.

Were there other units like the Kiheitai?

Yes. After it came the Yugekitai, Rikishi-tai and many more, collectively called shoshi (the irregular units). Ito Shunsuke’s sumo-wrestler unit and the Yugekitai are said to have joined the uprising at Kozanji.

Did the United States take part in the 1864 attack?

It did, but only one of the 17 allied ships was American; Britain supplied nine. The United States was in the middle of its Civil War. The USS Wyoming that sank Choshu ships in 1863 was a separate, earlier reprisal.

Is the date of Senteisai the same every year?

Yes. Emperor Antoku’s death anniversary is the 24th day of the third lunar month, but the Meiji calendar reform fixed it as 2 May, so the festival runs on 2 to 4 May every year. Keeping the lunar date would have moved it around the Western calendar.

Sources & references

* Where origins are debated, we note that. Readings and origins draw on public sources; please check each source for the latest.

Written by: LoreMania editorial team / Source verification: noted per item ／ Editorial & sourcing policy

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