Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 295 - The Satsuma Rebellion Part 2: Imperial Goon Cave

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

The conclusion to the Satsuma Rebellion! SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys SOURCES: Andrew Gordon. A History of Modern Japan William Beasley. The Meiji Restoration James Buck. The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 Romulus Hillsborough. Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen Through the Eyes of the Shogun's Last Samurai. Noel Perrin. Giving Up The Gun: Japan's Reversion To The Sword.

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the

show. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me is the foremost purveyor of Dutch Kabuki, Tom. Fucking Dutch Kabuki. Yes, I really like to express myself through the meaning of dancing with fans. Yes, I really enjoy dancing with fans, and most Kabuki, they use white face paint, but here in the Netherlands, we use only black. We are disrupting the Kabuki space. We are reinventing

Kabuki. It's Western Kabuki now, in the Netherlands. This Kabuki in Netherlands, I have decided that all Dutch people are simply Sean Conneryy because i can't i can't do accents uh both me and joe are freezing joe has his blankie on right now i'm in my office is a fucking ice box as i'm learning i am in a Sherpa-lined car jacket. I am freezing. Joe is freezing.

Joe just got some sort of medical thing done. I'm dying hungover. I had to go to an eye appointment, which is my first experience dealing with pseudo-Dutch healthcare because you don't have to go into a doctor's office or anything. It is so much smoother than any time I've ever been to the eye doctor in the United States. I don't have to go into a doctor's office or anything it is so much smoother than any time i've ever been to the eye doctor in the united states like i don't have insurance yet so it's

still expensive but still less so than paying for it in america so i was just like this is wonderful they're like oh yeah your bill is this many euro i was like thank you yeah no i i would say by a great margin it's probably a better experience yeah it was it was honestly no complaints other than the fact that I am just an impatient asshole and I long for some sci-fi system where they just point a computer at my face

like use your glasses and my eyes are so fucked up that I have to wait like a week for them to bring to find my contact lenses that I need because I hit the genetic lottery are so fucked up i have to wait like a week for them to bring up to find my contact lenses that i need because i hit the genetic lottery the fucking jackpot when it comes to my vision i have i'm nearsighted i'm farsighted and i have astigmatism in both eyes so in any other era of human existence i would have been left on a cliffside to die. That's literally what I was

going to say. Left in a forest. Yeah. Just leave that one. He hasn't even survived long enough for us to name him. Give him to the forest dogs. Yeah. Joe, have you ever heard of a thing called the 12 pubs of Christmas? I have not.

At time of recording I am hung over and I have to do the 12 pubs of christmas tomorrow the 12 pubs of christmas is a thing i that i think originated in ireland i might have people might do it elsewhere but essentially you have to have one drink in 12 different pubs over the course of an evening you have you spend half an hour in each bar then walk to the next one and repeat 12 times see that doesn't seem that bad i mean whenever we hang out together we sink significantly more than a dozen pints yeah well it's more so like you have to factor in there's loads of tactics to it also each pub has pub has a different rule. So it's like no pointing, no using someone's first name,

no swearing, which is a problem for me. And essentially, it's like you have a group of people and it's the logistics is what provides the issues. It's like, okay, we have to get this group of people to leave a bar at the same time and all make it to the next one oh yeah good luck with that there's gonna be people falling out from pub number four this is gonna be like you know helicopters leaving vietnam and someone getting kicked off the rudder someone just left behind like the uh the marines on top of the embassy or like that scene in tropic

thunder yeah see the real tactics when it comes to a pub crawl is when you play the opposition force to the pub crawl and you have to lay an ambush for the people doing the pub crawl because you don't want them to make it to the pub that you're enjoying because pub crawl groups are always the worst people

so you have to set like an ambush in the middle of city center as they cross from one pub to another. Digging punji pits in central London. Excuse me, sir, do you have a license for that ambushing trench?

Yes, I do. I've actually cleared this with the city council. I'm just wearing a high-vis vest, digging a hole and putting sticks in it and just putting cones around it so no one walks into it. You can get away with anything if you wear a high-vis vest. You can get away with anything if you wear a high-vis vest. High-vis vest and a clipboard.

I've seen like loads of videos of people sneaking into festivals just by having a clipboard and a high-vis vest. I mean, I kind of did something. When I was stationed at Fort Knox, one of our jobs was training lieutenants who have yet to finish their officer's training on how to use tanks. And you kind of get seconded to this training mission to kind of just be their bitches.

Like you literally have to drive them around because even though they're learning how to be tank commanders and whatnot, nobody ever teaches them how to drive the fucking thing so you have to drive them around you have to drive them around in humvees and stuff as well i know how to use a tank in theory but the best thing to do is to act busy so you don't get stuck in one of these crews so what i learned to do was grab a random clipboard and simply walk around like you're busy or you're like anxious

and you're trying to do something like glance around, dart your eyes around, whatever. Like, damn, Sabian is trying to get something done. We should really task somebody out for this. And these missions, like they can last from like three weeks to a month and you're in the field the whole time. And my crowning achievement was making it the whole month without ever having

to actually do anything. I walked around with a clipboard every fucking day. So people could see me. I do it for like 15 or 20 minutes and I would fucking vanish because I literally, I literally go out to the wood line, like find like a comforting spot with enough like brush coverage, whatever.

And I would read and then I would go back inside after a couple hours do the clipboard dance go back out until i saw people starting to like dip into their tents to sleep and i'm like it's time to go to sleep joe and i did that for 30 days you're like some fucking mark twain character sitting there reading your manga that's how I finished the entire Gonsgo series up until that point, which is like several thousand pages of book. And then I

got an award. Awards mean nothing. That's right. So, Tom, speaking of nothing that we were just talking about, when we left you last time, our main character of our story, Saigo Takamori, the former leader of the Satsuma clan, one of the founding fathers of the Meiji Restoration, tried to start a war with Korea as a jobs program. Failed, resigned from government, took his ball, and he went home. Now, Saigo is not the only one who took

this route. The entire debate over the war in Korea, or the debate that would become known as the Sechiran, was more than just that. Nobody really gave a shit about the war itself. It ended up being a dividing line between the conservative faction and the progressive faction and in this context I mean those who were pro modernization and those who were pretty much just pro modernization of just the military give us guns and let us keep

doing samurai shit so when the conservative faction those generally being from Setsuma Saga and Tosa all resigned, it allowed the most powerful guy in the Imperial Council, a guy named Okubo, to pretty much purge the conservative faction from government

without ever having to actually do it because they had removed themselves. And conservative here meaning a very different term than what you're probably thinking. It generally does. It's like if I use the word Republican at any point in this podcast, it probably doesn't mean what Americans think it means.

Conservative in this standpoint meant return to samurai tradition, which is let us do whatever we want, give us free money and rice from the government to not actually have to work, but then give us all the fancy war toys from around the world for the emperor. I mean, who would turn down free money and rice

from the government and not having to work? I mean, I would do that now. But it's very funny because I'm sure people probably know, if they do know about this rebellion, and they know about Saigo Takamori, they see him in a completely different light, and we'll get to the reason why.

Yeah, I mean, as someone who has spent several periods of my life subsisting purely on rice and golden curry cubes, I can see where they're coming from. I was a rice and beans family myself growing up. And those blocks of weird government cheese. I am so fascinated with the idea of government cheese.

I feel like it's only legally able to be called cheese because the government says it is. I would really like to believe that the samurai were sitting around trying to come up with new philosophical terms to slice their guts open while eating what is effectively the shitty version of a Kraft single. Now, these guys were not planning on just going home. In January 1847, that is Meiji Year 7, the seventh year of the Meiji Emperor's reign, nine Tosa samurai attempted to kill Iwakura Tamami. He was a member of the Imperial Council, and they failed. The next month, a member of the cabinet who resigned, Eto Shinpei, led a samurai revolt in Saga. He was joined by Shina Yoshitaki, another conservative faction member.

Together, they demanded a return to feudalism. Of course, they meant, you know, how things used to be. Or a complete rejection of Christianity. And, of course, war against China, Russia, and Germany for some reason. Nobody could quite figure out why oh god he's like fuck you he's like doing that bit from half baked fuck you fuck you fuck you

you're cool fuck you I'm out yeah somewhat hilariously these samurai were not exactly spry to say the least they They were mostly in their mid-fifties. Yeah, and they spent the past fucking what, like

ten years doing nothing as well? Painting? Generations. Generations. Like, the whole concept of, like, Bushido and, you know, this Pax Japanica that I will continue to say because it infuriates Tom. I fucking hate it so much i can feel

the leather patches on the jacket that i'm not wearing expanding across my elbows when i say that you're turning into podcast to guru uh to guru like they the samurai had all grown incredibly soft they thought they were the baddest motherfuckers on earth but the vast majority of them until the boshin war hadn't done shit literally they are the only time that meme of good times make weak men is actually true and it was good times only for them not the country yeah like other than there wasn't like large-scale civil wars or whatever remember that it was good times for him because they're the top of the only person above them is the country yeah like other than there wasn't like large-scale civil wars or whatever remember that there's it was good times for him because they're the top of the only person above them is the fucking emperor on the caste system so they're like yeah it must suck to be a peasant

but anyway i'm learning how to finger paint for the next 10 years getting really into crocheting yeah yeah he's they started building all their furniture out of pallets like a like a mid-2000s the diy person on youtube for some reason i'm just imagining all of these samurai running small etsy shops they absolutely would but they would insist you don't pay for it because it's dishonorable but then they would make you pay for it because they're assholes. I cannot express enough how much of dickhead samurais were. They're most pompous, like, coddled dickheads on Earth. That is what this rebellion is about, but more on that in a bit. Now, these older samurai, you know, these guys from Saga launching this rebellion,

thought Saigo and Setsuma would come rushing to their aid, but they didn't. Despite what would come later, Saigo never had any intention on any kind of rebellion against anybody at this point. Remember, he's on top of ideologically believing the Emperor is

a literal deity. The Emperor is also his friend. So he's like, I'm not rebelling. It's fucking stupid. Yeah, that's a bro-shido. Bro-shido, that's right. God, I hate it so much.

But in this case, it's true. And Saigo loved the emperor as a person and the emperor loved him back. Most people think that this was actually thanks to when Saigo had that short stay as a care and the emperor loved him back most people think that this was actually thanks to when Saigo had that short stay as a caretaker government leader and his very influential

position as head of the household imperial guard he changed how the emperor's inner circle worked before emperor Meiji effectively the emperor was just surrounded by what amounted to a harem. But they didn't fuck

him. I don't think, like, their job wasn't explicitly to fuck him, but it probably still happened. It's like that Boys Host Club anime. God damn it. He didn't learn anything. He wasn't allowed to really leave the central

chamber of the palace. Everything was considered too pure for him. He wasn't allowed to really leave the central chamber of the palace. Everything was considered too pure for him. He had like this, you know, effectively a platonic harem to some extent that were supposed to tend to his every need. He was never supposed to work for anything outside of his very, very classics based education, which remember from last episode included nothing to do with politics or how to run a government despite the fact he's now literally the head of government now saigo took all of that away because it was by design meant to coddle him and make him easy to manipulate and saigo saw that he replaced them all with like old grizzly. He replaced this harem of incredibly attractive women who did anything the emperor ever wanted with grizzled old samurai who would sit around and chill with him, talk philosophy. They would lift weights and then teach the emperor martial arts.

I mean, look, doesn't sound too bad for the emperor's like revolution is like revelatory like holy shit i actually can just get absolutely bombed onto the ground and not die i'm not made out of glass yeah he like the emperor later in life thanked saigo for like making him be healthy because sitting around and being weighted on a hand and foot isn't actually good for you yeah he left the goon cave and joined the gym right and all Saiga was doing was simply

checking in on his lads mental health yeah exactly like sometimes you need to get your mates to stop gooning and sometimes you need to get them to go to the gym what is gooning? wait you don't know what gooning is? I have no idea what gooning and sometimes you need to get them to go to the gym okay what is gooning wait you don't know what gooning is no idea what gooning is okay so gooning is like uh you teach me the language

of the youth tom it's a term for people who excessively masturbate and like have like four monitors and like have porn on all of them and have accounts online just for consuming porn and that's just all they do. So a goon is a streamer. Eh! I don't think you can stream gooning. I think it's an OnlyFans thing. Yeah, because the

act of the gooning is the masturbation. The goon cave is like this room you have in your house that has like six monitors and you're watching like six different porn hub streams at once yeah if you invent the matrix internet chamber to watch porn you're not jacking off that actually just makes it weirder i mean look it's just serial experiments lane for men god i hate that room it's terrible yeah pretty much yeah so that that's what gooning is so

we went from the gooning emperor to the lifting emperor yeah yeah he's he's the swole emperor now yeah i mean i would never call emperor meiji swole i'm not here to objectify emperor meiji uh but the emperor did literally thank him for his strong body so So, you know. There you go. And, you know, the Emperor appreciated this because, like, it was obvious that Saigo saw him as a human being on top of everything else. So everybody else either

at best saw him as this guy that was too pure to literally do anything. Masturbating with a velvet cloth or whatever. To, like, at worst, like, we need to keep him in as a weird goon cave so we could like manipulate him and keep him stupid damn a velvet lined goon cave

would smell so bad you know it smells wild in there you have to steam clean the room at least once a week no like saiga revered the emperor he saw him not only him as his position but as a person. Intellectually, he was very competent and good. But then he saw the imperial council as people who had, in effect, become shogun again, retaken him hostage and taken all power

away from him. To a lesser extent, without this personal aspect of the relationship, that is how all the other samurai rebels saw their acts of rebellion. Not acts of rebellion against the emperor, but acts of rebellion against the imperial council that was corrupting him. Now, once the government responded with their army, their new fancy army with conscripts and whatnot, Eto fled as his army was crushed, ending up in Kagoshima, which is, remember, the prefecture

that Setsuma was turned into, Kagoshima City being the capital, and that is where Saigo is. Now, once there, he begged Saigo for help, and Saigo took this meeting so unseriously, he met him while relaxing in a hot spring

so just a quick aside the correct definition of gooning is a form of masturbation that involves edging in brackets maintaining sexual arousal without reaching orgasm for a long period of time resulting in a hypnotic trance

like state thanks I hate it so Buddhist monks are doing gooning for the soul. I hate this so much. Everything I've learned about gooning has been against my will. Now, sitting at this hot springs meeting, Saigo eloquently told Eto to fuck off. He had no intention to rebel and he said doing so was kind of dishonorable

two weeks later the rebellion completely failed its leaders were all captured and beheaded now it had been a year since Saigo had gone home and if you're thinking that he went home and retired got off his high conservative horse and his ideological leanings

taken up some weird samurai pastime until he'd finally get to write a death poem. You're very, very wrong. He went home to Kagoshima and attempted to turn it back into Setsuma, a feudal domain. Despite all of the government reforms, Saigo was still Saigo. That meant the man that the central government had picked to become governor Saigo was still Saigo. That meant the man that the central government had picked to become governor simply stepped aside and allowed Saigo to do whatever the fuck it was that he wanted. One of the things that he wanted to do was to create

a large-scale paramilitary school system called the Shigako. Now, all of the teachers would be samurai, and the students would also be samurai, as well as anyone else of the samurai cast or slightly attached to it remember this kind of education in saigo's world is not for anybody below this cast these schools are meant to teach people philosophy bushido all that jazz but in essence they were military camps and he opened hundreds of them. I have a question.

Maybe I should have asked this in the first episode. Is being a samurai a hereditary thing? Yes. Okay. Yeah, you're like an elevated caste system. It's passed on through the men in your family. Okay. Born to samurai, world is a fuck, 100 million finger paintings. There is stories of people entering the samurai caste from outside that they are incredibly rare.

Yeah, Tom Cruise. Exactly. Tom Cruise purged the Thetans from his system to become a samurai. That's what Scientology does for you. Yeah, you purge your Thetans through gooning, and then you become a samurai. does for you. Yeah, you purge your thetans through gooning, and then you become a samurai. Now, Saigo and his men were not

adverse to modern technology. Unlike what is shown in The Last Samurai, I cannot stress this enough, because even outside of that classic Tom Cruise-led historical masterpiece, this idea still survives in popular culture and belief. Virtually

everyone, if they know anything about the Setsuma Rebellion, they frame it as a return to tradition kind of thing. It wasn't. Their problems with the Meiji reforms had nothing to do with modern technology and everything to do with their class superiority being taken away from them. Saigo and his samurai trained extensively

on how to use firearms. He opened a fucking artillery school. One of the schools was named the Rifle Corps School. These guys loved guns almost as much as an average American. I mean, like, look, samurai with guns,

really cool idea. In practice, not so cool. Didn't work great. It turns out if you have an effective samurai who's armed with a gun, you just have a modern soldier. Because once you train someone how to effectively do all those things, like you don't need all the other bullshit on top. In just one year, the schools had an enrollment of 30,000. And they were open from kids all the way to people in their 60s.

And in case you're wondering how they had so many available local men to staff these schools and attend these schools despite universal conscription being in place the kagoshima government never actually made their popular their their male population report to military duty they never submitted to conscription and the government was just like fuck it okay saigo's doing his shit whatever yeah like what are we gonna do we gonna are we gonna make this guy do conscription don't think so there's actually more to it than that as you can imagine these schools were a massive fucking concern to the central government like guys they're effectively building terrorist training camps in kagoshima like yeah it's like

fucking they're doing like north african training camps and it's just like uh should we be concerned that this guy is training you know 60 000 people how to fight generally it's not good good for internal security for there to be a large- scale extra governmental paramilitary education system you know it's not good and remember the government had been facing rebellions constantly mostly from minor clans and their leaders former clans and their leaders

they were terrified that Saigo might try something and not only was Setsuma already the most powerful like clan amongst the domains before the restoration, they had built a proxy state with their own self-funding and self-fueling military. It was the most powerful non-government force in Japan. And remember, Saigo was a national hero to everybody.

He wasn't just some weirdo in his prefecture doing this. He was a hero to regular people, but also specifically samurai. So another disaffected samurai heard what was going on. They heard about Setsuma enforcing the rigid social system that they all wanted back in place because it made them feel like special little boys. They had restarted the Setsuma domain with political appointments and ignoring the central government so all these dudes flooded into kagoshima to take part and just so you know how thoroughly this had reformed the domain every single government official from the lowest office to the highest including every single cop in the prefecture was a Setsuma clan samurai.

Oh, this cannot go wrong in any way possible. And in case you're wondering how they managed to pull this off, it was allowed by the central government. They treated Setsuma specially. Like, they knew how powerful Saigo was, how influential and important he was, and he would need to be treated differently than all the others. So they let a lot of shit slide

and bent rules left and right for him. Like, for example, like we talked about last time, in our last episode, one of the things about the Reformation was, like, the government appoints a government man to be your governor. Like, he's not, like, a clan loyalist. He probably has absolutely

nothing to do with the previous domain. His loyalty is to the central government. That was not the case in Setsuma. The governor they picked is a guy named Oyama Suniyoshi, and he was a Setsuma clan samurai. They picked a local boy. Same with all the administrators, the officers, the the cops this is thought to be a nod to their local rule would this would endear all these guys to the benevolence of the imperial government i we respect you we're showing you respect by letting you kind of govern yourself we're not stepping on your toes and whatever you'll eventually see that this that you can work with us and holy fucking shit did that backfire yeah i i can't imagine um it causing any problems you know this i i'm sure they probably thought

this was going to go so smoothly yeah yeah they were really i think what they're really trying to do is keep this what used to be satsuma appeased until saigo fucking died and everybody else like all the other rebellions were kind of snuffed out because at that point when they enforce the rules on them they would be more powerful and be able to spill like you know treat satsuma like a bug like no power nothing and without the unifying and honestly without the unifying factor of saigo this rebellion doesn't happen in the same way. It still happens, as we'll get to, but it doesn't happen at the scale, I don't think.

Yeah, because you don't have anyone with a unifying vision in the same way that he did. Yeah, you don't have Japanese George Washington rallying people together. Did Saigo have slave teeth as well? It's probably the best we don't look into that too much yeah now oyama the governor ignored tokyo constantly including direct fucking orders he collected taxes but sent none to the central government he ignored conscription orders and he

funneled all the government funding given to him by the central government back into the previous feudal system of paying samurai, funding the local paramilitary schools that were becoming increasingly more militant, completely independent of ideas or beliefs held by Saigo Takamori. They had become little chambers of self-radicalization

funded by unemployed samurai. This is something that we will never see happen again in Japan. Certainly not. Now, this increased to the point, because at this point, Sai goes out of the picture. He sets all this up,

and he kind of just does his own thing. So the schools are now being ran without him, and their political extremism increased to the point that anyone in the schools or associated with them were forbidden from leaving the prefecture at all. They reinforced the Bakufu era isolationism, but within their own weird samurai proxy state. How do you enforce that? By pain of death. Okay.

I can imagine that would work. by pain of death. Okay. I can imagine that would work. Now, some people were unhappy with it because they're like, well, how do we spread our glorious ideas to these other places that need to be reminded

of their elevated status and then effectively boil down to, fuck them. All right. Yeah. And like we alluded to before, the full samurai ban finally came into effect.

And from this point on, only military officers and police would be allowed to wear their swords in public, along with the infamous samurai topknot hairdo. These were the main class signifiers of the samurai. The government then cut the stipends to the samurai, switching from cash payments to a government bond system that would purposefully render them completely destitute. And then they stopped the food stipend entirely. Hey, the samurai are eating government cheese. Oh, they cut the government cheese.

There's no government cheese left. No, they're using their bonds to buy government cheese now. Yeah. It was clear what the message was from the central government. The era of the samurai is dead. We've killed it. Go get a

fucking job. Fuck you, get a job, bitch. Now, other samurai's clans, groups, whatever, continued to rebel, but Saigo still didn't. Other rebellions popped up in response to the sword ban and the stipends being cut, but Satsuma still remained calm because still didn't. Other rebellions popped up in response to the sword ban and the stipends being cut,

but Satsuma still remained calm because they didn't feel it. The central government cut the stipends, but remember, the governor was defrauding the central government to continue paying the samurai and feeding them, and the cops were also samurai and weren't going to enforce the sword ban. Yeah, you know, like, it's like how cops uh operate today pretty much and some things never change and a lot of the samurai had actually come to just carrying rifles with them everywhere which was also totally fine yeah at least they have to get close to you with a sword

yeah and the rifles were also stolen from the government. Government's really not doing a great job here. Because, like, why would they need to rebel? Saigo had broken away from Japan as a whole, and the central government had no power there. He had his own intelligence apparatus. They were tapping government telegraph

systems. Oh, for fuck's sake. They had more independence from the Japanese central government than many nations that are considered free today have actual sovereignty. And as a whole, the government had done absolutely nothing to try to stop or bring them back in line. And so Saigo didn't seem too worried about it. He felt like, well, maybe this is just how we live now. And as other samurai rebelled, he was out hunting and fishing. A lot of people considered him semi-retired.

He had nothing to do with the government anymore, even in the unrecognized, de facto, independent state of Setsuma. He was kicking away his days, hanging out with his cousins going fishing and hunting he he wasn't even involved in these schools that were just becoming so radical even he didn't recognize them anymore yeah yeah he'd even think about that one day the government might show up and be like yo where the fuck are your taxes not like getting al capone and and getting done for your taxes would have been a very funny end to this. I'm kind of surprised that isn't what finally

breaks the government's back on this. Now, something finally did happen though. In December of 1876, the government sent a non-government Satsuma government cop named Hisao Nakamura and 57 others into kagoshima to investigate what was going on there because the satsuma intelligence apparatus was so effective

that the central government didn't have anybody there like nobody really knew what was going on only like some stories would flitter out and be like hey did, did you hear that Saigo Takamori opened an artillery academy? And they'd be like, fuck me, are you serious? Hunter, the Muslims are so sick of this guy. They had to have been. But he was untouchable, effectively. He was too respected, too well

connected, and again, the Emperor loved him. Yeah. See, you got the Emperor in your corner, you're a little bit fucked yeah and almost certainly they would have been left alone but we're getting to why that doesn't happen now these government cops were immediately captured tortured and some of them were beheaded now the works the nakamura confessed to not only being sent from the central government but also his mission was to assassinate saigo takamori however nakamura later said he made all of this up just so they would stop

torturing him which like yeah that's how torture works they're like they have them strapped to a chair and they're like blasting fish at full volume if you don't tell us everything that we want to know we're gonna bring in a guy who thinks he's a sommelier and he's just gonna start explaining to you the various micro climates of italy no even worse even worse joe they're just gonna bring in a guy who's like kind of okay at stand-up but isn't very good and he's just gonna do bits at you for like hours on end i got it prop comic i like prop comedy you're fired you're fucking fired fine i quit unfortunately we only accept the resignation of people on this show via ritual seppuku so if you will turn around you'll see the podcast samurai sword um i can't act as your second seeing how i'm in a different country i'm going to call

someone else from the trash future studio i assume alice who will bring her own sword and she will then cut your head off to ease the pain as i am holding this ceremonial lines led by Donkey's sword, it is kind of strange that the hilt is in the shape of Joe's head. That's right. Look, it's about the pageantry, alright? Oh no, it's not the hilt, it's the pommel. Sorry, I'll use the correct term before someone

corrects me. Yes, the pommel is in the shape of Joe's head. It's kind of weird. The correct bladesmith term is the handy thing. There is evidence to suggest that there was a government plot to murder Saigo Takamori. Later, another government spy,

Tanaka Naoya, proposed to Tokyo that they set off all of the city's powder magazines, of which there was several, and they would explode, cause a massive swirling chaos, a fire, all this stuff, and then they would murder Saigo Takamori in the confusion, so

maybe someone could blame it on his political enemies. Now, this message and why they knew about it, those in Setsuma knew about, was intercepted because it was sent over telegraph and Saigo's paramilitary students had tapped into the government telegraph wires.

You know, sometimes there is benefits to, you know, sending a message on horseback with a guy. Look, I'm just saying I have public education and I never once learned how to crack into government intelligence lines. So who's to say whose education is better? Yeah, true. The next month, the government hired a Mitsibishi uh owned steamship to go to kagoshima and remove all the government arms and ammunition from all those stockpiles that were in the town because saigo and his students mostly his students because saigo's you know you know effectively retired going on his hunting trips or whatever had been freely arming themselves like

they'd pilfered thousands of rifles, cannons, tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. They'd just been helping themselves. And this is where things get kind of interesting. The story of the Satsuma Rebellion is effectively the story of Saigo Takamori. However, it began without his input at all. Because when these ships showed up, thousands of his students trained and armed to the fucking teeth, stormed the government stockpiles and shot up the government ships to get them to fuck off.

From what anyone can tell, there's no evidence to suggest that Saigo had anything to do with this. And it happened without his orders or even his knowledge because when someone finally ran out to him because again he's on another hunting trip and he was told what happened he was fucking pissed he's like why would you do that

yeah you know creating radical education cells that are autonomous from like any kind of central governance. And arming them to the teeth. Yeah. And remember their education effectively boiled down on, boiled down to killing people is morally and ethically,

ethically good. And this is why. Yeah. So like, you know, what did you expect to happen? Did he expect them to like, no, they're going to wait until

I tell them to do it? He thought so because ideologically they should have. They were never supposed to act without orders because remember, going back to our last episode, Saigo and the others wanted to murder the Bakufu but couldn't because they lacked orders

from the superior saying it was okay. And since that was the education level they were getting, he's like, man, what the fuck? I even brainwashed these guys wrong. But if you, if you ask the students from the school though,

while they suddenly popped off into what was effectively a spontaneous uprising, it was to protect Saigo. The government had already said Nakamura to kill him. And now they're planning on blowing up the magazines and possibly killing him then. So to the students, it was only a matter of time before Tokyo finally came for Saigo's head, so they had no choice but to fight to defend them. According's also kind of older. He's not super healthy. There's a very good chance that the Emperor and Okubo are like, let's just wait him out and wait for him to fucking die. But we don't know that for sure. It does make a lot of sense in retrospect. Virtually every bit of motivation for this rebellion was added later by someone else.

Saigo had refused to help any of the other rebellions and never once talked about rebelling himself, though he had planted like an inner palace coup when he worked with the government. But since retirement, he's hunting, man. The dude was the dude was hunting and fish pilled like you had nothing to do with any of this. I'm getting rod and reel pilled. And this is not to say he's innocent because he created this mess to eventually cook off but yeah my god my guy was doing like yakuza side missions while this war was starting he's running his host club and shit yeah he's really good at karaoke exactly and even when it was clear to him that he was going to have to come out of retirement to muster his forces against the government now that

his oh yeah out of control paramilitary students with guns and cannons had started a fucking war nobody had any goals or even a strategy in mind even the men who sparked all of this did not have a plan

beyond what they had already done this is evidenced by the fact that when Saigo called all of his commanders in for like a war council, none of them knew what to do next. Two of them, a guy named Beppu Shinasuke and Hemni Jiroda told Saigo that they should simply muster their forces and march in Tokyo, which much easier said than done. Yeah. Others insisted that Saigo had simply walked to Tokyo and demand an apology from the government for trying to kill him and insist

to the emperor that he should personally fire the entire government and install Saigo as the dictator of Japan that would have went well it probably would have worked honestly like if he like because like when the main reasons they didn't take this route was because of people like that saigo takamori steps one foot in tokyo they're

gonna kill him yeah so like but i have a strong feeling that if saigo takamori actually spoke personally when i went with the emperor he would have won yeah but saigo didn't want to do any of this but he knew he couldn't turn anybody away from this path of war. They had given the government the reason to finally crack down on them, and none of them were going to back down. This route had been picked for him by default. I mean, not really by default. He had created this mess that would eventually turn into it, but the rebellion happened, and there's no turning back. Furthermore, he was smart enough to know that he had led them to that point. He had trained them. He had armed them. He had motivated the stand up for what his

own schools had taught them, that being the conservative worldview of the elevated samurai caste. So he believed it would have been dishonorable to allow them to fight and certainly die if he didn't. So, he would lead them. Saigo and two others signed a letter and gave it to the governor in order to notify the central government that they were officially in rebellion and were to proceed to Tokyo in order to question the government about their conduct. And in the letter, Saigo insisted on speaking to the emperor by himself. Now, this immediately terrified the government, not because of the Satsuma rebellion, but because of what Saigo represented as a human being.

Again, I cannot understate how much of a national hero of both the restoration and to the emperor he was. They knew damn well once word got out that he was taking up arms against the government, every other hotbed of samurai unrest would join him and there were still plenty of those and not to mention there's plenty of non-samurai factions in japan that hated the fucking government and would throw themselves in with saigo as well and they did armed peasants like the government is fucking us over you know the unified theory of fuck that guy and saigo has like sunk so many points into charisma if he gets to talk to the emperor one-on-one he will win prop yeah he's a he's a pure charisma build i mean he is also like old and fat at this point yeah he's not he's been living the retirement life hard living the retired samurai life right which was already pretty cozy and saigo's forces were by no means a pushover he had 30 000 men on retainer he was a no shit qualified

and seasoned military leader his men were trained on the concepts of modern warfare they had thousands of rifles they had cannons they have more than enough ammunition to go around and that isn't even to account how many other samurai and people would pour in to support him saigo had trained the commander of the imperial army general yamagata iratomo under whom there's 50 000 soldiers the vast majority of whom were conscripts held the imperial naval commander was saigo's fucking cousin. Like, there's so many people involved with the Imperial Army that are related to or literally were led by Saigo

at some point in the last couple decades. Yeah, so he knows pretty much everything they're going to try and do. He not only knows that, he knows their temperaments, he knows their habits, like he knows how they react in war. He's like the Merovingian. And in essence, the government was truly worried that like in

an uprising, the army could fall apart. There's so many people that could be loyal to Saigo. Even people not from the Setsuma clan or his family that revered Saigo, they would join him. It would break the entire security apparatus. Also as well, like if you're

a conscript and like this dude is like, his side looks a lot more appealing than being a conscript in the Japanese army. I don't know. Like their life for a regular peasant certainly got better after the

restoration. So I think, and I think everybody, any normal person really didn't want to go back to some dickhead with a sword that could kill you on the street just because you looked at him wrong. Like I can, I cannot state enough how much like samurai were violent psychopaths that

had carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. Unless it was to another samurai, of course. Then there's honor and shit involved. Saigo led his men north in February the 15th in a blinding snowstorm towards Kunimoto Castle. And if this weather seems like a bad choice to do a military campaign, it is. But Saigo saw it as a good omen

because the exact kind of weather had greeted him years earlier when he led soldiers out to fight the Bakufu. So, you know, good omens and all that good omens don't keep you warm. So I know what he's thinking here. He knew if he could take control of Kunimura castle, he would effectively control all of Kyushu.

And as of yet, government forces hadn't fractured or fallen apart over split loyalties, and Saigo was convinced that the exact thing would happen if he was able to score a major military victory first, like taking this castle. People were like, oh, he's actually cooking out there. We're going to go join him. What was he cooking? Obviously, the government knew this too, which is why they ordered the garrison commander of Kumamoto Castle, Tani Tateki, to fight on no matter what should Saigo attack

because they were really hoping he was just like puffing his chest out and he'd go back home. Tateki himself gave Saigo a warning, informing, all was well and good, but if Setsuma soldiers crossed into the town, they would be resisted with force. And Tateki was also given a suggestion by the central government to immediately muster his forces and attack Saigo in the field, but Tateki refused. He was smart. His garrison was made up almost entirely of men who were connected to Kagoshima and could very

well still have some kind of loyalty to Saigo, so he was worried that they just wouldn't listen if you ordered them out of the gates. Shit, Tateki himself fought under the command of Saigo during the Boshin War, and he himself really hoped he wouldn't have to fight him and Saigo would just go home.

Side note here, Tateki once worked with the US military during Japan's invasion of Taiwan and the American counterpart that he worked with called him a quote, little imbecile. Not that it has anything to do with anything. I just thought it was funny. Governor Oyama of Kagoshima

acting on Saigo's behalf sent a letter ahead to Tateki asking him very nicely as the governor of Kagoshima, if he would simply let Saigo go on by and pass peacefully to Tokyo, because he only wishes

to speak to the emperor. That's fucking insane. Tateki didn't even bother to answer the letter. He's like, no, y'all are carrying an awful lot of guns for a conversation, fellas. Let my gun talk. Saigo thought for sure that despite the castle being one of the strongest in Japan, he was more than up for the task.

Because remember, he's a samurai, right? His men, they're samurai. He sought to take his peasant conscripts as not only terrible soldiers, but they were completely unable to ever become decent soldiers, no matter how much training or how many guns they had. Because to Saigo and men like him, these were unwashed, uneducated farmers that were better off going back to the fields. On top of his hatred for the lower class, Kumamoto had just weathered the Shimperin Rebellion a few months before. And this was an uprising conducted by a guy named Adeguro Tomu

who was a samurai who became a priest who then thought he was given a mission from God to overthrow the government. What's with all these people who think they're on a mission from God? It seems to be a trend. And he ambushed government officials.

He murdered the governor, the head of the garrison there. He killed dozens of soldiers. So this just happened a few weeks before. The soldiers are... Oh, and by the way, it also inspired Yukio Mishima's book, Runaway Horses. Once again, it all comes back to Mishima. So who's to say which one of these things is worse?

Now, because of this, Saigo thought the conscripts within the castle would be pretty demoralized when they just weathered that one rebellion from a very small group of only 200 samurai when he was leading an army of tens of thousands. So he believed he would simply waltz up to the gate and the soldiers, you know, being genetically inferior because of their caste and unable to be true warriors, would simply throw down their rifles and surrender. And the Samurais themselves were all armed with rifles,

ammo, and a sword. And, you know, in comparison to the men that fought the government during the shimperin rebellion saigo's army would be fucking terrifying so saigo's army showed up the conscript army did not in fact immediately surrender and instead began shooting them to pieces as the samurai threw themselves at the walls and this did not work the conscripts fought them off, including in hand-to-hand combat with bayonets. Which most of like, I can only imagine how like depressed the first samurai to cross the walls,

like pull his katana from its sheath and like go into combat, believing that he is the greatest thing that's ever been armed with a sword. Only for some, like some dude who's farming rice three weeks ago, absolutely ventilating his chest with a bayonet thrust like i turned into absolutely pink maced violence has been equalized you samurai bitch stab yeah like samurai armor not great against bullets and despite vastly outnumbering the defenders two to one, Saigo could not take the castle by force. And seeing that this is going nowhere, and I assume still

coming to terms with the equality of a rifle in the peasant's hand, Saigo called off the attacks. Instead, he would keep the castle surrounded, send his soldiers on patrols to the north to keep a lookout for government reinforcements, and simply wait for the castle to surrender from the lack of food.

And this turned out to not be a great siege tactic because remember, it's the middle of the fucking winter and now his soldiers slash samurai are standing out in the open in the middle of winter storms and having to dig into frozen ground with no shelter. The defenders weren't really in any better position other than having walls to hide behind because shortly before the siege had begun, most of their food and ammo had actually been

destroyed in a warehouse fire, and they were waiting for resupply when the battle actually began. So they burned through what little ammo they had during that first two days of active battle, and so as the samurai dug into the snow banks around them, both sides just kind of sat down and stared at one another. However, Tateki knew he had reinforcements coming. He also knew, because of the terrain and the distances, if Saigo actually wanted to surround the castle and patrol north for the coming government reinforcements that they all knew were coming, he would be stretched very, very thin. And he was. very thin and he was his samurai army was stretched over a area of seven miles which when you have 20 000 30 000 or so men that's not enough to cover that adequately and then

came the imperial reinforcements numbering 90 000 they were under the command of Prince Arsugawa Taruhito, the Emperor's nephew by adoption, which was normal back then. Like virtually everyone else in this rebellion, the Prince had also previously fought alongside Saigo during the Boshin War, though unlike pretty much everybody else, he fucking hated Saigo Takamori. Why? He hated Saigo because his closeness with the emperor. Saigo was closer to the emperor than the emperor's own adopted nephew was, who was a fucking prince. And not to mention, the prince

like most other people were progressive in the Meiji restoration context, and he hated the conservatives. And by that, I mean Saigo Takamori and everyone else who argued that they should be able to carry a fucking sword around in public. Another man in the army was Yamagata Erotomo, who we already talked about.

Now, they led their forces in the battle across the entire Satsuma samurai line, and despite being horribly outnumbered, the samurai actually held for a little bit. And then it began to rain. Oh, this is not good you see in the years since satsuma had all but closed itself off from the rest of japan and looted the imperial japanese army's stockpiles japan and its army had continued to modernize so while the satsuma men were well armed their rifles and cannons were already by this point point, really out of date. They were muzzle-loading muskets. Meanwhile, the Japanese army had brought huge amounts of American Civil

War-era firearms, mainly breech-loading conversion kits for the Springfield that fired cartridges. Now, I'm not a gun nerd. I'm not going to go into this too much and become one, but cartridges were in a metal case. They were protected from the rain. The Samurai's guns were not. I'm not saying that these conversion kits were super reliable because they weren't, but they were certainly more reliable in the rain than loose gunpowder getting wet and therefore becoming useless, which is what exactly happened to the Samurai. Yeah, I hate to see it. They weren't using the worst guns on earth,

but they had armed themselves with what was effectively the surplus, like old surplus from the Imperial Army. So once it started to rain, their guns began to misfire on them. So they drew their swords and ran at the Imperial Army. This led to them, you know,

of course getting shot to pieces because things don't work like they do in Hollywood movies. Eventually the line broke and around the same time later, Tateki had punched through Saigo's lines and reopened a supply route between the reinforcements and his castle, effectively breaking the siege. and having absolutely no way to take the castle, Saigo ordered a withdrawal after 54 days of siege, leaving behind thousands of his samurai dead in the snow behind him. Oh, they didn't carry all their bodies back? No.

No, they just left those shits out there. The crows were eating good. Probably write a pretty death poem about how their body will become flowers or some shit. I don't know. Yeah, did a finger painting of the bottle. Yeah. Saigo is now completely out of ideas.

Remember, he didn't really have any to begin with because he didn't plan this. He didn't even want the rebellion. And he assumed he'd be able to steamroll some idiot peasants. Not only did he see that was not true, he saw the wonders of a modernized army. true, he saw the wonders of a modernized army. They could pump out tens of thousands of soldiers, all armed and trained better than any of

his men, despite the fact that they had spent literally their entire lives learning how to become warriors. The supplies wouldn't stop. The soldiers wouldn't stop. Even a castle outnumbered two to one could resist them. He was realizing I am fucked.

And then Tom Cruise shows up. Yeah. He's going to show up, fuck Saigo Takamori's sister, because you remember he killed that woman's husband and then slid into his family. Oh, yeah. Because that's not weird at all. Effectively was adopted by them.

Learned six words of Japanese and then suddenly becomes the savior of Japan. And then gets shot like six times with a Gatling gun and his only downside is walking with a limp somehow. I'm actually going to watch that movie tonight. It fucking rules. It's so dumb. It's awesome.

And the casting outside of Tom Cruise is very good. His men were coming to the same conclusion. Having been awesome. And the casting outside of Tom Cruise is very good. His men were coming to the same conclusion. Having been smacked across the face by the changing of the times, they marched for seven days through the cold and the wet, hungry as hell, before they made it to Hitoyoshi and began to

dig in. Their only saving grace at this point was the Imperial Army had also stopped for the weather and to resupply before chasing after them now at this point on saigo and his men are permanently on the run if that wasn't bad enough for the rebellion the navy pulled around them dropped off several thousand men to take saigo's headquarters at kagoshima which fell without a fight because wouldn't you know it they had forgot to leave a garrison of any kind behind that seems very very foolhardy he's just

like sitting there smacking his forehead like i knew i forgot to do something shit now he was completely cut off without any base of support saigo ordered groups of samurai to scamper off into the woods to launch hit and run attacks on government forces but still other samurai vanished abandoning saigo and the cause which brings into question their dedication to this to launch hit-and-run attacks on government forces. But still other samurai vanished, abandoning Saigo and the cause, which brings into question their dedication to this whole samurai thing in the first place. You know what they say, those fucking fair-weathered samurai, am I right?

Yeah, exactly. Saigo had no other plans going forward, and he knew he couldn't confront the Imperial Army in the field like he had just tried to do and got smacked on the dick for it. Instead, he would fight with what little ammo they had and retreat before getting bogged down in a stand-up battle. But the constant running and total lack of resupply meant that before long, the rebels had run out of ammo, and they had to ditch their cannons. They'd be down to a couple muskets and their swords. There's only 3,000 of them left.

Saigo and what remained of his men managed to escape towards Mount Anadake, and by this point of the campaign, Saigo was not doing so well. As noted by others, he had gained a lot of weight during his retirement, and he wasn't exactly in, let's say, prime samurai shape anymore. Despite living on 54 days of rations outside of a castle during a siege, he apparently didn't slim down at all. He was also struck down by a severe case of, and this is true,

massively swelling balls. What? Yeah, his balls just swelled up like a balloon. What, did, like, did he get hit in the nuts or something? Maybe he had an infection i have no idea like it's just that he was like paralyzed with pain because of his massive testicles uh they had gotten so bad he could not ride a horse or even walk unaided anymore and he was being

carried around via sedan chair because again his massively swelling balls it was the physical manifestation of his hubris you could say testicular hubris yes yes over the course of the rebellion saigo had been followed around everywhere by his two dogs and knowing that what was probably going to happen next and he didn't want them to suffer the same fate as he did. I assume because dogs don't live under the rules of Bushido. Yeah, well, like, how can dogs... Do dogs commit seppuku by going across or down? Hmm. Another question for the ages. First, they have to figure out how they wear pants.

I just love the idea that, like, no, you don't have to follow this to the end. You don't follow the same rules as I do. Fifi, you must go now. And the dog's like, no, master, I must stay. My honor demands it same rules as i do fifi you must go now and the dog's like no master i must stay my honor demands that he's like no you must go kamikaze dog that's just the soviet union anti-tank dog one of these dogs made it all the way back to his house in kagoshima and waited on the porch for him to return which spoiler spoiler alert, Saigo never returns back home. And this dog is memorialized next to Saigo Takamori

himself in his statue that stands today in Tokyo. But only one of the dogs? I guess the other one was just an asshole or something and nobody wanted to honor it. It's just like, fuck this guy. Yeah, fuck that other dog. This dog is the good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody knows

that other dog has whispered something anti-Semitic from time to time. I don't know. Jesus. When a government army that outnumbered his own seven to one advanced through the mountain forest, Saigon's corps of a few hundred rebels escaped, leaving the majority behind to kill themselves

out of shame or surrender. Most of them killed themselves. Yeah. Because they were going to get the death penalty anyway. Yeah. Look, they knew what was coming. Look, if there's one thing I've learned from Bushido, it's that first you don't succeed, kill yourself

so it doesn't happen again. Eventually, Saigo and his men made it all the way back home to Kagoshima, camping out on Mount Shirayama, which overlooks Kagoshima City, his former headquarters, which is now garrisoned by around 10,000 Imperial soldiers. By this point, General Aratoma was furious with his own army. They had every advantage, but Saigo had managed to break out and get away dozens of times. So he ordered his forces to surround the entire mountain and build a never-ending, interconnected network of earthworks, trenches, lookout posts, and camps to make sure those fucking samurai couldn't get off the mountain again.

And the samurai had done their best to dig in as well. They had virtually nothing to dig in with, so they had to scrape in holes with butts of rifles in their bare hands. They had some muskets with them, but no ammo. But they had managed to steal some gunpowder from a government store during their retreat. So while some men were digging, others were melting down any piece of metal they could find,

minus their swords, to forge a few dozen bullets. Saigo's command position was little more than a hole that was six feet deep and three feet wide. Some would simply call this a grave but sure you could say he dug his own grave that's right two of saigo's officers approached imperial lines under a white flag to try to negotiate eritomo gave them a personal letter to give the saigo because

remember they know one another which said all of this could end if Saigo simply surrenders. The rest of the samurai could go free and unpunished, and Saigo would be taken into custody, almost certainly to face a death sentence. There's no way around that. Saigo was okay with this. He asked a few hundred men that were still with him, would you lay your guns down and go home, and I'll go into Erutomo's custody? Every single one of them refused. So, everyone gathered around Saigo's command hole, got fucked up on sake as the Imperial Army and Navy began the largest land and sea bombardment ever witnessed by a group of people that could call themselves samurai. Five warships and thousands of pieces of artillery blasted the mountain, and the bombardment went on for the entirety of September 24th. By the end of it, only around 40 samurai were still alive. The government launched what would be their final assault at 3am,

and the 40 samurai, Saigo included, formed themselves into a loose line to face them, Formed themselves into a loose line to face them Outnumbered 60 to 1 Jesus Christ Then they launched themselves into the advancing imperial army Under the cover of darkness armed only with their swords Saigo is with them So I assume he's helped along by a single crutch His massive swollen balls weighing him down

He's like swinging them around Like a morning star by a single crutch, his massive swollen balls weighing him down. He's swinging them around like a morning star. Yeah. And this actually worked for a split second, because it's pitch blackout. And suddenly, the soldiers marching up the mountain just start getting hacked down under the cover of darkness in complete silence. And they were surprised.

The first forward elements of the imperial army like waver and like run away so for like five whole seconds there really seems like this might work and then the soldiers behind those ones remember like hey we have guns and then they shot the samurai to pieces saigon his massively swollen balls were shot in both legs and the stomach and went down like a sack of shit which tends to happen when you get riddled full of more holes than you know bad cheese and now what happens next we're not sure, but most agreed upon stories that Saigo was pulled away from the battlefield wounded, I assume with one man pulling him under the armpits and a second man hoisting his gigantic nutsack off the ground.

I have to say, finding out that Saigo was inflicted with the surprise case of elephantitis of the nutsack during his final stand completely bled away all of the seriousness that could be leveled here because it's the only thing i think about is like he's fighting with the samurai sword his massive nutsack at a wheel barrel or something in front of him as like he's just getting this shit shot out of him now he's pulled away from Battlefield Wounded and asked his good friend, Beppu Shinosuke, to act as his second so he could commit ritual suicide.

And with that, Saga pulled out his short sword and gutted himself, and Beppu cut off his head. Then Beppu picked up his head, handed it to another man, and ordered him to hide it. That man buried it, but did such a bad job that his hair was sticking out of the ground. Topknot still in place, like the world's most fucked up carrot.

So the Imperial armies is like, picked him up by his fucking topknot, like, look what I found. The few surviving samurai met their ends by charging out to certain death or killing themselves as the last positions fell to government forces. Their bodies were recovered

by imperial forces and laid down next to one another as a sign of respect. Then when Saigo's head was delivered to Erotomo, he washed it personally with water, redid his hair, and buried it with his body. Saigo and the age of the samurai were dead and gone for good. Though, Saigo himself would only remain a criminal under the law for a few years. years.

Despite his intensive conservative belief system that was based around the samurai caste and everyone being under him, Saigo became an anti-government champion, standing up to the restoration that he had helped create in the first place. Popular woodblock

prints showed him as the god of Mars and humans trying to drag him down to Earth. Other art showed him as a star and the government trying to shoot him out of the sky out of a hot air balloon. This is only reinforced by the hard fucking times that the Japanese

people felt immediately after the rebellion because this was not the goal of Saigo's rebellion but he did implode the Japanese government's economy. Fighting Saigo had drained the treasury dry and forced Japan off the gold standard. They had to raise their national debt by triple what it had been before to pay for everything.

This fundamentally shook Japan to its core, as the government was forced to sell off pretty much everything that was centrally owned to wealthy capitalists forming what would become known as the Zaibatsu, or family-owned monopolies that would completely dominate Japan until, well, there was nothing really left to dominate after 1945, was there? Emperor Meiji eventually pardoned Saigo for the rebellion a little over 10 years afterwards in 1889

and he became a venerated state example of spirit sacrifice and how honor could still be found in defeat certainly things that would never be used again for any bad reasons anytime soon in the history of the Empire of Japan, but yeah.

Yeah, don't look up anything that happened in Japan between, what, 1939 and 1945. Don't look up anything that any Japanese company was also doing in that period like Mitsubishi. But before we end here, we do have to talk about of course, a conspiracy theory

because it's kind of fun. Let's go. Saigo never died. Oh. Saigo lived is the conspiracy theory. A not unpopular theory is that Saigo somehow survived and made it to Russia. Yeah. No idea why this started.

Yeah, no idea why this started. News eventually got around that the future czar, and at this point, current crown prince of Russia, Nicholas II, was coming to Japan for the first time in 1891. People began to believe that he own that Saigo was going to return. Russia was going to install him as the new leader of Japan and overthrow the emperor. So that cop decided I have to kill the crown prince of Russia. And he came really fucking close to succeeding. Really?

The cop Suda Sanzo waited on the side of the road for the prince to appear in Otsu. Once he came out, the cop charged at him, slashing at him with a police-issued saber, hitting him across the fucking head. But it bounced off of his skull because the blade wasn't sharp enough. When he reared back for another blow, he was beaten nearly to death by the prince's cousin, who was armed with a souvenir bamboo cane that he had just bought five minutes before. Funnily enough, on this trip, that's where Zara Nicholas II got that very famous dragon tattoo on his forearm. I'm not even joking. That's actually true.

Wait, really? forearm i'm not even joking that's actually true wait really yeah czar nicholas second had like a really cool um a japanese dragon tattoo on his arm sick it's the only cool thing about him and what's really funny is like the cop would later lament that if he had a samurai sword he would have killed the crown prince which which is actually probably true. He probably would have cleaved directly through his fucking skull. Instead, he just kind of doink. Now, the cop was arrested, sentenced to life in prison,

died a short time later from illness because he was in a labor camp in the 1800s, and his hometown grew to hate him so much, they officially banned the use of either of his names for newborns. But think of it this way. If a crazed cop, believing in conspiracy theory, succeeded in murdering the future czar of Russia

for trying to install the ghost of Saigo Takamori as emperor of Japan, maybe the Russo-Japanese War never would have happened. Yeah. And if that, World War I wouldn't have happened. There also wouldn't have been the October Revolution as well, 1917. So many things would have been different

if this weird cop just would have fucking sharpened his sword first. Yeah. Instead of giving a crazed bonk to the side of Nicholas's head. Yeah, sure. Isn't the same thing like if the dude who assassinated Franz Ferdinand hadn't have gone for the same thing like if the dude who assassinated franz ferdinand

hadn't have like gone for a coffee after he failed the first time he wouldn't have killed him or if uh gavrilo princeps didn't resort to using a firearm when all the bombs failed yeah and that is somehow the story of the setsuma rebellion the shit rocks this is the story of the Setsuma Rebellion. This shit rocks. The story of angry conservative samurai really not wanting to get a job. Mm-hmm. Once again, Yuki Omishima.

Hey, it all came to the same end, I guess. Tom, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. If you would like to ask us a question, we answer an error. on the show called questions from the legion if you would like to ask us a question that we answer on air support the show via Patreon you can find the link in the show notes and we will answer it on air you can put it

in Patreon messages you can ask us on Discord you can attach it to a very dull Japanese cop sword and hit Tom in the head with it and we will answer it on air. That shit can't hurt me.

My skull is too thick. That's right. The weirdest thing that happened to you just as you were stepping out of the house. Oh, I have to think about this. Like, nothing really comes immediately to mind. What about you?

I don't have one while i was stepping out of the house i have one when i was stepping into the house which i assume is covered under the question um i just dropped uh someone off at the airport and i returned back to my house it's like 2 or 4 a.m something terrible so i'm very tired and as soon as I step inside, my kitchen exploded. The second I crossed the threshold of my home, a water main in my kitchen wall went off like an IED. And there's just a massive geyser of water pumping into my house so fast that by the time I realized what was happening and ran outside to turn off the water I had created a swamp

the entire first floor of my house thankfully it was a rental so it must have sucked to be that landlord but fuck em yeah like it's not necessarily like stepping out of home but like one time I was in a bar and

as soon as I stepped out with uh the front door to go for a cigarette i heard this shout and i was like what and then two guys on a moped speeding up the street had like grabbed a phone out of this woman's hand and just like disappeared yeah oh i was in cyprus not that long ago i wasn't in a bar or stepping out of my house, but I was stepping out of a store. Broad daylight, mind you. The street is perfectly calm. I step out and two drunk Dutch college students square up with one another, speak no shit, cock back, and rock each other in the face so hard that they both hit the ground. And that was it.

That was the whole thing. But that is our show. Tom, plug your other show. It's Beneath the Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. Like I said in the last episode, last year we did a four-part series

on the history of Japan told told through japanese tattooing so if you enjoyed this series maybe check out that one and yeah this is the only show that i do but if you like what we do here consider supporting us on patreon you get almost six years of bonus content you get every single episode early you get first dibs on live show tickets and merch. You get eBooks, you get audio books, you get access to our community discord. You get, and you get access to precisely one hair plucked from a non-disclosed part of Tom's body. And you support us.

You make everything we do here possible. So if it's something you want to do, please do it. And if not, leave us a review on wherever it is you listen to podcasts. It helps us immensely. And if you don't, we will do nothing. We just appreciate it.

Just looking for a bit there, but I'm just so tired. I got nothing. My fuel tank is empty and I'm very cold. And everybody, thank you so much. And until next time, build a second statue of saigo takamori's other dog what the fuck guys