 In May 1866, with the assistance of Thomas Blake Glover, Yoshihara was one of five Satsuma samurai smuggled out of Japan on a Portuguese cargo ship to England, in violation of the national seclusion laws of the Tokugawa shogunate.Nire Kagenori was another of the five samurai in this mission.The five travelled via the Cape of Good Hope to London, where they met with the members of the first Satsuma delegation to England, which had arrived a year earlier.