Summary
The unsuccessful Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 (also known as the Seinan War² 西南戦争), a nine month long uprising of Satsuma-based samurai against the nine year old central Meiji government, was Japan’s last civil war.  Led by ex-Meiji government official and samurai Saigō Takamori 賊魁西郷 (January 23, 1827 – September 24, 1877), the rebellion resulted in the death of  roughly 20,000 rebels and 6,000 government forces.

Background
With the formation of a conscript military based on European models in 1873 the samurai class of professional soldiers found itself marginalized.  In Satsuma, the samurai class was particularly powerful and a strong central government issuing prescripts against many of their long-time privileges generated, at best, grudging partial compliance.  With the issuance of the March 28, 1876 prescript against samurai carrying swords and an August cut in government stipends to samurai, opposition to the central government turned violent, and on October 24 two hundred radical samurai attacked and briefly held Kumamoto Castle, the Meiji government’s main military installation in Satsuma.  Sporadic outbreaks continued, culminating in raids at the end of January 1877 on the government armory in Kagoshima City by students from the private samurai schools, known as Shigakko.

Saigō Takamori (1827-1877)

Saigō Takamori was a revered figure to many Japanese.  Physically he was imposing, standing six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds.  He was a key player in the formation of the Meiji government, both as a military leader against the Tokugawa shogunate (see the print Surrender of the Ezo rebels) and as a politician shaping foreign and domestic policies.   After his leaving service with the Meiji government, largely over differences on Japan’s Korea policy, [see the print The Debate Over Invading Korea (Seikanron)] he returned to his home province of Satsuma where he cultivated his image as “a man of virtue, culture, and honor” and where he was generally regarded as a “living legend.”3  While not actively engaged in politics he remained politically involved through the Shigakkō (private samurai schools), where he was “celebrated as the spiritual leader.”4  While he is viewed by historians as a reluctant leader of the rebellion his reputation made him the natural leader.  After a raid on the government arsenal by Shigakkō students, his hand was forced and on February 7, 1877 he announced his decision to “confront the central government.”5  Nine months later the rebellion was over, Saigō was dead and his out-manned and out-gunned rebels decimated.

Twelve years later in 1889, as part of the celebrations around the introduction of a new constitution, Saigō was pardoned by the emperor and elevated in rank. In 1898, a bronze statue of Saigō with his faithful hunting dog was erected in Tokyo's Ueno Park.  [See the print Bronze Statue of Saigō in Ueno Park.]


The Legend Continues
Source: The Japan Times Online http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20090913a6.html


The Japan Times
Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009

Death Song Linked to Meiji Era Hero Saigo Found in Army Doctor's Diary

KAGOSHIMA (Kyodo) What may be a death song written by Takamori Saigo, a hero of the 1868 Meiji Restoration, has been discovered in the diary of an army doctor who was in the antigovernment force Saigo led in the 1877 Seinan War, it was learned Saturday.

The song, written in the traditional quatrain poetry style featuring seven Chinese characters on each line, was discovered in a diary entry made by Taisuke Yamazaki that was dated Sept. 24, 1877. That was the day when Saigo, one of most popular figures in Japanese history, committed suicide in Kagoshima during the civil war.

…[T]he author laments in the song that all the roads are blocked by enemies in the war, his life is full of both merits and demerits, and he has no face to again meet Nariakira Shimazu, the samurai who ruled over Kagoshima.

Early Government Censorship

Woodblock Prints
Throughout the revolt the conflict was chronicled, sensationalized, mythologized and, finally, its leader Saigō was deified by woodblock publishers and artists.  Woodblock prints issued in the hundreds depicting bloody battle scenes, strategy meetings and, ultimately, Saigō’s death and “ascendance to heaven” were eagerly bought by the public.  Constructed from their imaginations and newspaper reports, well-known artists such as Yoshitoshi, Kunichika, Chikanobu, Yoshitora, Toshinobu, Kunimasa IV and lesser-known artists such as Toshimitsu, Kunimatsu and Toshimoto churned out prints in the tradition of the great warrior prints of the earlier Edo-period.


These Satsuma Rebellion prints would serve as a model for the thousands of prints produced during the 1894-1895 Sino-Japanese War and the 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War.

¹ Japan Day By Day, 1877, 1878-79, 1882-83, Volume 1, Edward Sylvester Morse, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917, p. 269.
² Translated as the "West-South War" (Seinan no eki).
³ The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, Mark Ravina, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2004, p. 196.
⁴ Ibid., p. 197.
⁵ Ibid., p. 201.