In December 1871, a Ryukyuan vessel shipwrecked on the southeastern tip of Taiwan and 54 sailors were killed by indigenous Taiwanese peoples.

Fifty-four of them were killed by Paiwan while the remaining 12 were rescued by Han Chinese who transferred them to Taiwan Prefecture (modern Tainan).

They then made their way to Fujian province in mainland China and from there, the Qing government arranged transport to send them home.

The Foreign Minister Sakimitsu Yanagihara believed that the perpetrators of the Mudan incident were "all Taiwan savages beyond Chinese education and law.

[14] On 3 May 1874, Kusei Fukushima delivered a note to Fujian-Zhejiang Governor Li Henian announcing that they were heading to savage territory to punish the culprits.

[16] On 15 May, Cassel acted as a negotiator to Chief Issa (Chinese: 伊厝), head of the island's sixteen southern tribes.

The small Japanese group retreated back to the main force, and upon returning found the sergeant had been decapitated by the indigenous Taiwanese, his head taken as a trophy.

[19] On 18 May the Japanese ship Nisshin commanded by Akamatsu Noriyoshi anchored in Kwaliang bay and launched a small boat to conduct surveys.

Despite receiving no injuries, Akamatsu was enraged at the incident and made immediate plans not only for attack on Koalut, but the nearby village of Lingluan as well.

The Japanese returned hastily to the shore and sounded the alarm, and 250 men accompanied by Wasson marched inland to respond.

Wasson was dismayed at the lack of discipline of the Japanese soldiers, particularly in the rear, who quickly broke rank and dashed ahead in a race to get to combat first.

Colonel Sakuma Samata commanding a 150-strong force marched too far inland and was ambushed by 70 Mudan fighters, commencing the Battle of Stone Gate.

The indigenous Taiwanese people were already in pre-selected ambush positions behind stone, while the Japanese had to make do with what cover they could find from rocks seated in the waist-deep river and only being able to employ 30 troops at one time due to the terrain.

The fighting lasted a little over an hour, until Sakuma ordered 20 riflemen to scale a cliff to his left and fire on the natives from above while the men in the river continued to press them.

On 1 July, the new leader of the Mudan tribe and the chief of Kuskus admitted defeat and promised not to harm shipwrecked castaways.

Toshimichi Okubo arrived in Beijing on 10 September and seven negotiating sessions occurred over a month long period.

[25] Although launched ostensibly to punish the local tribesmen for their murder of 54 Ryukyuan merchants, the 1874 punitive expedition to Taiwan served a number of purposes for Japan's new Meiji government.

Japan had for some time begun claiming suzerainty, and later sovereignty, over the Ryūkyū Kingdom, whose traditional suzerain had been China, though it had also been a feudatory of the by then defunct Satsuma Domain since the 17th century.

In particular, the success of the Japanese incursion was among the factors influencing the French decision to invade Taiwan in October 1884, during the Sino-French War.

Chinese imperial commissioner Shen Baozhen built the Batongguan Trail in 1875 across the island's rugged interior to encourage Han settlement in the mountains and better subjugate the indigenous population.