Boshin War - Later Depictions

Later Depictions

In modern summaries, the Meiji restoration is often described as a "bloodless revolution" leading to the sudden modernization of Japan. The facts of the Boshin War, however, clearly show that the conflict was quite violent: about 120,000 troops were mobilized altogether with roughly 3,500 known casualties. Later Japanese depictions of the war tended to be highly romanticized, showing the Shogunal side fighting with traditional methods, against an already modernized Imperial side. Although traditional weapons and techniques were used, both sides employed some of the most modern armaments and fighting techniques of the period: including the ironclad warship, Gatling guns, and fighting techniques learned from Western military advisers.

Such Japanese depictions include numerous dramatizations, spanning many genres. Notably, Jirō Asada wrote a four-volume novel of the account, Mibu Gishi-den. A film adaptation of Asada's work, directed by Yojiro Takita, is known as When the Last Sword Is Drawn. A ten-hour television jidaigeki based on the same novel starred Ken Watanabe. The 2001 Goryokaku film is another jidaigeki highlighting the resistance in Hokkaidō. Among Japanese anime, Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto in part dramatizes the Boshin War, while Rurouni Kenshin is set 10 years after. Rurouni Kenish's first OVA Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal is set in the time of the Boshin War and depicting several events of the Boshin war (for example the attacking of the Edo residence of the daimyo of Satsuma or the failed boarding of the Kōtetsu at the Battle of Miyako Bay).

Western interpretations include the 2003 Hollywood movie The Last Samurai directed by Edward Zwick, which combines into a single narrative historical situations belonging both to the Boshin War, the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, and other similar uprisings of ex-samurai during the early Meiji period. The elements of the movie pertaining to the early modernization of Japan's military forces as well as the direct involvement of foreign (mostly French) forces relate to the Boshin War and the few years leading to it. However, the suicidal stand of traditionalist samurai forces led by Saigō Takamori against the modernized Imperial army relate to the much later Satsuma Rebellion.