1754 Hōreki River incident

The 1754 Horeki River incident (宝暦治水事件, Hōreki Chisui Jiken) was an incident in which the Tokugawa shogunate ordered Satsuma Domain to carry out difficult flood control works in Mino Province near its border with Owari Province in the Chūbu region of Japan during the Hōreki era. Rivers subject to frequent flooding in this area included the Kiso River, Nagara River and Ibi River near Nagoya. Due to the difficulty of the project and due to malicious interference by shogunal authorities to make completion of the project more difficult, this order ultimately resulted in 51 Satsuma samurai committing seppuku, 33 samurai dying from disease and the responsible karō, Hirata Yukie, also committing seppuku. The river improvement project was finally completed in the Meiji period. The incident is also called the Hōreki Age River Improvement Incident and the Nōbi Plain River Improvement Incident.