Saigō at Mount Hanaoka during the Kagoshima Rebellion

Held by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and accessible through the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org image archive, this 1877 [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) depicts Saigō Takamori at Mount Hanaoka during the Kagoshima Rebellion. The composition shows Saigō mounted on horseback with his sword raised in a gesture of command, while his lieutenant Kirino Toshiaki stands at his side; the two figures occupy the foreground of a riverside battle scene, with government and rebel forces engaged in the middle and far distance. Mount Hanaoka was one of the staging grounds of the Satsuma campaign in the lower Kyushu region, and Toshinobu's choice to compose the print around the figures of Saigō and Kirino at the moment of battle conveys both documentary specificity and the heroic charge that would attach itself to the rebel commanders in the years following their defeat. The print is among the most explicitly sympathetic of Toshinobu's Saigō prints in its presentation of the rebel leader as a noble military figure rather than as a defeated outlaw, anticipating the broader cultural rehabilitation of Saigō Takamori that would unfold across the late Meiji and early Taishō periods. The Greater Victoria impression preserves the original aniline colors that distinguish the Meiji print palette and contributes to the international institutional record of Toshinobu's Satsuma Rebellion series.