In this triptych, we see the rout of the samurai by the imperial troops at the Battle of Lower Toba at Fushimi in 1868. At far right, rifle-bearing imperial soldiers crouch next to dead and dying comrades, taking aim at samurai fleeing across a river. Rifles offered the imperial troops a distinct advantage, yet as evidenced by the numerous mangled bodies of the soldiers, the traditional swords and pikes of the samurai inflicted great damage on their ranks. A blood-soaked figure to the left stands upright and appears to command the battle, with his left hand gesturing toward the direction of the fleeing samurai. Yoshitoshi's direct witnessing of the Battle of Ueno led him to translate into print the horrors of war and bravery of the soldiers who faced it. His intent to portray these gruesome realities is evident in this and many more prints of his early career.

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.