With the passing of the Tokugawa shogunate and its restrictions on depicting current events, Yoshitoshi was free to illustrate the grisly realities of war. In two scenes of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, "Battle Around Kumamoto Castle" sets forth the final destruction of samurai rebels by the imperial army at Kumamoto, and "Headquarters at Sentoguchi, 1877" shows Saigō Takamori, the bearded leader of that doomed rebellion, with his generals at their headquarters in Satsuma. In the latter print, Kirino Toshiaki, one of Saigō's most important commanders, points forward with his sword, the ubiquitous symbol of samurai culture. The story of the Satsuma Rebellion remains a compelling tale of honor, loyalty, and revolution. Because of his dedication to tradition and the ways of the past, Saigō Takamori is nostalgically known as "the last samurai." During a battle after his defeat at Kumamoto, Saigō committed ritual suicide (seppuku) with the aid of a retainer.

The Meiji Restoration (1868) ended the Tokugawa shogunate (military bureaucracy) and the reign of the samurai, but the popularity of samurai legend and lore remained. While Meiji administrators began developing a new style of government based on European models, Japanese artists learned techniques of Western art, employing them to a greater or lesser extent. Warriors and the ideals they represented remained a major subject of Japanese prints, especially as Tokugawa censorship laws were lifted and artists were free to chronicle current events. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839-1892) embraced journalistic veracity; an eyewitness to several major battles, his prints after 1868 are striking in their realism and unflinching depictions of war time. Yoshitoshi and other artists illustrated the last stand of the samurai, a war fought on the southern island of Kyushū, creating bloody and often romantic images of a martial culture in peril. The heroes of these prints were not the imperial Japanese army, who triumphed in the end, but the samurai rebels, who fought fiercely to maintain the power and ideals of their clans.