Pursuing Sabrosuke: The Other Last Samurai — Episode 59

The article describes events that followed Satsuma’s outbreak of fighting with Britain, when unrest erupted in the imperial capital. Disillusioned by the Choshu domain’s militancy, Emperor Komei and some court nobles conspired with Satsuma’s Shimazu Hisamitsu and Aizu’s Matsudaira Katamori to launch a coup. The piece places these maneuvers in the larger context of domain politics and mounting conflict in late-Edo period Japan, illustrated with prose and photographs by Fujino Hiroaki.