The first decade of the Meiji Restoration was tense. Most people went along with the changes that rapid nationalization imposed on their lives. Some, however, had reasons to resist the changes, and there were still pockets of armed pro-Tokugawa supporters, such as those who died in a last stand at Ueno Hill in July 1868.

The battle took place 8 months after the shōgun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, relinquished the imperially sanctioned right to govern the country to emperor Meiji -- 6 months after emperor Meiji formally declared himself the ruler of the country -- 2 months before Edo was renamed Tōkyō -- 3 months before the imperial era name was changed to Meiji -- and 4 months before emperor Meiji moved from Kyōto to the renamed capitol.

And the battle took place several years before the first news nishikie. The following prints, most of them in Gusokuya's Tokyo nichichi shinbun series, show how the battle was still fresh in people's memories.

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Valiant Shogitai loyalists are memorialized on the seventh anniversary of their defeat in the Battle of Ueno Hill.

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A government soldier helps a woman find her husband, a Shogitai warrior, where he had fallen at the Battle of Ueno.

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Skirmish at Todai Sannozan during the Battle of Ueno Hill.

Monjuro

Toeizan Monjuro in flames during the Battle of Ueno Hill.

Throughout Japan, farmers and townsfolk, and members of the warrior caste, found themselves facing new economic conditions as the political and social orders to which they were accustomed rapidly changed, creating opportunities for some, but loss, insecurity, and anxiety for others. Some localities witnessed popular uprisings, some of them led by disgruntled former samurai. The uprisings were reported in newspapers, and some news reports were depicted in nishikie.

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Hokuetsu peasants, led by priests and samurai, march on prefectural halls.

Kyūshū, the westernmost major island of Japan, was home to several domains that were close to China and Chosen, and the Ryūkyū Kingdom and East Asian trade routes, and far from the centers of Tokugawa power in Kansai and Kantō to the east and north. For this reason, Kyūshū domains more directly faced the conditions imposed by developments elsewhere in the region and the world at large, and were thus stimulated to protect their own interests in their own ways. This in turn the more radical leaders in some of the western domains to envisioning the sort of changes that would have to take place in the rest of Japan if it were to survive the stirrings of the foreign powers that wanted to play with Japan -- not only familiar European countries, but now also the United States of America, the new bully in the neighborhood.

Off coasts of Kyūshū and the reaches of Honshū nearest Kyūshū, European and American vessels sometimes encountered fire from shore batteries and retalitated in kind. A brief battle in 1863 between British and Satsuma forces in Kagoshima resulted in an Anglo-Satsuma naval alliance that benefitted Satsuma in its bid with Chōshū, Tōsa, and a few other domains to overthrow the Tokugawa government, from the fall of 1867, to the spring of 1868, when Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrendered Edo Castle to restorationist forces. However, some pro-Tokugawa holdouts and factions among the victors continued to be involved in standoffs and revolts after the formation of the Meiji government -- the lat and largest a rebellion that lasted over 7 months in 1877.

The Saga uprising, from February to April 1874, involving Etō Shinpei in Hizen, now part of Nagasaki prefecture, was widely reported in the news, which included stories about how the revolt affected the families of some of the revolters.

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Eto Shinpei, on the run from authorities, brushes an appeal to Iwakura Tomomi shortly before his arrest.

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Widow kills child and self to follow husband who had been executed for joining the Saga Rebellion.

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Eto Shinpei at a moment of peace before he "went in the wrong direction and became a devil under the sword".

The Seinan War, also called the Satsuma Rebellion, was the culmination of years of unrest among the ranks of former samurai and soldiers who had been loyal to the restorationist cause but felt themselves unappreciated or abandoned by Meiji government. The figurative leader of the uprising was Saigō Takamori, who was one of the principal leaders of the imperialist forces that overthrew the Tokugawa government. As a hardliner who advocated punitive and military solutions to conflicts, Takamori found himself rebuffed by elements that preferred leniency and diplomacy.

Saigō resigned his post in Tokyo, in protest over the government's rejection of his proposal to militarily chastise Chosen for refusing to recognizing Japan's imperial government and otherwise rebuffing Japan's attempts to establish direct diplomatic relations between the governments of the two countries.

The Seinan war embroiled the heartland of Kyūshū for nearly 8 months -- from late January 1877 to late September 1877. The war was preluded by skirmishes in Yamaguchi and Kumamoto in late 1876.

"Tokyo nichinichi shinbun" prints related to Seinan War

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Kumamoto rebels defeated.

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Yamaguchi rebels pursued.

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Riot at Shianbashi in Tokyo in December 1876.

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Shianbashi riot print retitled as night raid by Kagoshima rioters at Anseibashi in Kumamoto in April 1877.

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Ibaraki insurgents.

"Yubin hochi shinbun" prints related to Seinan War

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Shinpuren rebellion.

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Yamaguchi rebels on run.

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Kumamoto rioters.

Other prints related to Seinan War

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Fukuoka

"Kagoshima Shinbun" print on violence in Fukuoka.

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Nipposha

"Kagoshima Shinbun" print on Fukuchi Gen'ichiro and Nipposha's glory.

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Saigo Takamori walking his dog in better times.

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Saigo at the end of his trail on Mt. Hanaoka.

Japan in the late 19th century was not the sort of democracy it is today. Which is not to say it wasn't a sort of democracy. In the days of the news nishikie it was barely a nation and far from being a state. Not all provinces had been brought into the national fold, and there wouldn't be a constitution for more than a decade. But the subjects of the fledgling Meiji state were given, or took, new opportunities to determine their own destinies.

Participation took the form of civil protest, as in the Hokuetsu Riots. It also took the form of litigation, as in the efforts of Nishigori Takekiyo to free his former lord from the mental institution where he had been sent by political enemies who had him declared insane.

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Nishigori Takekiyo went to court to free his former lord from a mental institution where the police had confined him in 1883. The litigation began in 1887 and continued until 1895.

The Taiwan Expedition of 1874 was another by-product of the government's refusal in 1873 to subjugate Chosen. For essentially the same reasons, the government declined to chastise Taiwan for the murder by some of its aborigines of over fifty shipwrecked Ryukyu (Okinawa) islanders. But in 1874, after the Saga Rebellion, Saigo Tsugumichi (1843-1902), Takamori's younger brother, took matters into his own hands and led a large imperial force to Taiwan to find and punish the responsible inhabitants.

There are many graphic depictions of scenes from the Taiwan Expedition drawn mostly by people who had heard or read first- or second-hand accounts of what happened. Most nishikie were published in Gusokuya's Tokyo nichinichi shinbun series. This was not a co-incidence, since the series was drawn and written by people connected with the newspaper, and the paper's star scribe, Kishida Ginko, had accompanied the expedition and regularly sent back exclusive reports.

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Saigo Tsugumichi's expedition engages Raw savages in the Botan mountains of Taiwan.
(Yoshiiku's first Battle of Stonegate triptych)

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Saigo Tsugumichi's expedition collects Trophy heads of Botan aborigines in Taiwan.
(Yoshiiku's second Battle of Stonegate triptych)

Taiwan
shinbun

Yoshitoshi's Battle of Stonegate triptych.

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Japanese soldiers dress a Botan maiden in a kimono.

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A native Taiwanese carries Tonichi reporter Kishida Ginko across a stream.

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Taiwanese submit to the authority of Japan's expeditionary forces.

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Japanese and Chinese officials signing Taiwan concililation agreement in Peking.

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Japanese show the flag to celebrate the detente with China over the killings in Taiwan of shipwrecked Ryukyuans.

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Man haunted by ghost of brother-in-law who died in Taiwan. A revised edition has different story.

After Japan settled accounts with China and withdrew its surviving forces, decimated by malaria, China attempted to better police the native populations and encountered resistance from some villagers. At least one Ōsaka news nishikie print reported a Taiwan incident story.

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After guards from Hongkang village kill two Chinese soldiers on patrol, China dispatches a military troop that march on the village, but the guards have escaped, and the soldiers burn down the village and withdraw.

Confrontations in Kanghwa in Chosen, in September 1875, again aroused demands, again mostly from Satsuma quarters, that Japan deal with Chosen militarily. And again, Ōkubo Toshimichi and others insisted on a diplomatic solution, albeit with the help of gunboats. This time Japan strong-armed Chosen into signing a treaty of amity, in which Chosen agreed to open three treaty ports to Japan, while Japan recognized Chosen as an independent and equal state.

The incident, and the treaty signed in February 1876, were the subjects of a number of nishikie that featured stories on current or recent events in the rapidly changing Empire of Japan.

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Japanese marines pacify Kanghwa island, from which a Chosenese battery had fired on a Japanese ship.