The Seinan War in 1877 was one of the greatest civil wars in Japan.

After the end of the Tokugawa shogunate system by samurais in 1867, the Meiji New Government by the politicians mainly from Satsuma and Choshu domains, present Kagoshima and Yamaguchi Prefectures, started the modernization of Japan.  They quickly tackled replacing the decentralization by more then 350 feudal lords with the centralization of administrative power under the emperor system.  Since samurais were deprived of a privilege as a ruling class, their frustration reached a maximum.  Consequently, a series of rebellions broke out here and there throughout the country.  The Seinan War was the last and the most serious one among them.   Saigo Takamori, one of the political heavyweights of the Meiji Government, stepped down from an important position to be the leader of the rebellion against the government, the so-called Seinan War, which was made up of so many dissatisfied samurais mainly from the old Satsuma domain.  The central government strived to organize commoners and samurais nationwide to form troops.  They eventually succeeded in suppressing the rebellion taking eight months.  The fierce battle between the two powers reached the turning point, the Tabaruzaka Battle in present Kumamoto Prefecture.  Saigo’s troops were unfortunately defeated by the government and they were obliged to flee to old Satsuma domain, Saigo’s hometown, where he committed hara-kiri.  The war ended.  Since the end of the war, Japan’s political system has been changed from the swords of samurais to the power of speech.  The first photo shows the old battlefields of Tabaruzaka.  The second one is the storehouse-style construction with many bullet-holes on the exterior walls. 

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