>>539721886
Satsuma was also the birthplace of Saigo Takamori. To sum: minor Samurai worked his way to being a prominent servant of the Satsuma Daimyo, a prominent reformist. He was exiled a couple of times for political reasons after his patron died, during which he studied a lot, and eventually ended back in Satsuma, strongly displeased with the Shogunate. He repeatedly managed to get the reformists out of hot water, though not quite committing to anything until Katsu Kaishu (yes, that guy) pulled his Sensible-Talk-no-Jutsu and convinced him to join the reformation. He tried to meet with a similarly disaffected forces of Choushu to arrange an alliance, which was not going well because both sides kept quibbling over protocol, until a buddy of Katsu you already know finally pulled off the meeting, which led to the successful Satsuma-Choushu alliance.

Despite being one of the architects of the Meiji Restoration, Takamori ended up dissatisfied when the reformists began cancelling the privileges of the Samurai class. He had gathered a following of disgruntled (soon-to-be-former) Samurai to advocate against these policies, though it’s unclear how far he ever MEANT to go. At one point though, some of his brasher followers decided to seize an arsenal to oppose the Meiji government directly, and when Takamori found out he reportedly said “shimatta”, which depending on the tone can mean anything from an ominous “It has begun” to “… oh, fuck.”

Takamori then led the Satsuma rebellion (using guns, because, again, not retarded) and after being wounded too harshly to keep going, committed seppuku.

Even if you’ve never heard of Takamori, virtually EVERY “last stand of the Samurai” dude in popular media is based on him, like the red dudes in Way of the Samurai 4 or Katsumoto from The Last Samurai. The title is partly a pun on his name since, although his name is written with different kanji, “saigo” can be read as “the last”.