Satsuma revolt (1877), an incident peculiarly illustrative of the conflict between the old and the new after the Meiji restoration in Japan. Takamori Saigō, a hero of the Restoration wars, had argued that unemployed samurai should be used to invade Korea, and when this was rejected he retired to Satsuma, heartland of his clan of that name on Kyushu island. From there he viewed with rising fury the introduction of conscription and the abolition of the samurai monopoly of bearing arms. The revolt he led became something of a clan civil war, with his followers defeated by the new conscript army led by his cousin Oyama Iwao. In February Saigō captured Kagoshima, the provincial capital, then laid siege to the city of Kumamoto. Oyama relieved the siege and drove his old chieftain back on Kagoshima, where he made his last stand on Castle Hill. Blasted out by artillery, on 24 September Saigō was wounded in a last sortie and committed seppuku assisted by a faithful follower, who then killed himself. Oyama went on to become war minister and along with other Satsuma raised the money to put up bronze statues to Saigō in Tokyo and Kagoshima. After the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5 he, Adm Togo, Gen Kuroki, and other Satsuma went to report their victory to the latter. The revolt marks the end of the clan-based samurai tradition and the transfer of its ethos to a national rather than a sectional force.
— Hugh Bicheno
