Some time ago I visited the city of Kagoshima on a business trip. While there, I was lucky enough to be pointed towards Mt. Shiroyama – a small mountain just outside the city itself. I was told it was a beautiful, tragic place, littered with the still-fresh wounds of war, and I knew I was in for a very special day.

The site of the Battle of Shiroyama, this is the place where the 1877 Satsuma rebellion against the new Meiji government was finally, brutally, crushed, as fictionalised in the film The Last Samurai.

Making my way up the mountain on foot, it was hard not to feel transported back to the very day of the battle; so vivid were the remnants still littered across the mountain. Join me then, if you will, on this photographic journey through time to Mt. Shiroyama, Gruelling Battleground of the Last Samurai Rebellion. Here is everything (and I do mean everything) I saw on that day.

(warning: some readers may find the following pictures troubling)

I hope this has been as educational for you as it was for me. I certainly was not disappointed by all the signs, and historical sites that were definitely there on the mountain and not fake and made up when I visited on my one (very rainy) day off during a tiring business trip.

(okay, so the view from the was pretty good, even if it was raining buckets all day)