'Kagoshima Mōyū Soroi'

This 1877 print, held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, depicts a scene from the Satsuma Rebellion, the 1877 armed uprising of disaffected samurai in Kyushu against the new Meiji imperial government. Led by the former government minister Saigō Takamori, the rebellion was the last great samurai revolt against the modernizing reforms of the Meiji Restoration and was crushed by conscript imperial forces in fighting around Kagoshima and the surrounding region. Adachi Ginkō's print belongs to the dense visual reportage that surrounded the conflict in Tokyo print shops, where designers and publishers competed to produce timely depictions of battles, key figures, and dramatic incidents from the campaign. The print is an early example of his engagement with current military events, a genre he would return to two decades later in his sensō-e of the First Sino-Japanese War. As a document of the Satsuma Rebellion's place in Japanese popular imagination, the print sits alongside contemporary works by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Toyohara Chikanobu, and others who shaped how the public understood this final samurai war. It is held in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of Japanese woodblock prints.