Would you prefer me to go into it a little bit more? I'm very sorry, I made the assumption more people may have seen the movie than were fluent in the history of the crossover of the Tokugawa Shogunate into the Meiji era of Japan.

Saigo Takamori was a Samurai who helped put the Meji emperor back into power. He was under the impression that this would be a return to the way the Japanese government was originally set up, with the Emperor, a direct decendent of the Japanese Sun Goddess, at the top and a heirarchy downwards. This was not the case. Emperor Meiji reformed Japan, started industrializing. The sentiment of the time was that warriorship was no longer valued, so much as soldiering was (and there IS a difference.). Saigo Takamori's life reads like a helpless war romance, putting back to power one things he beleived highly in only to have it destroy everything else that meant something to him. Saigo rebelled, knowing full well that he had no chance of winning, and his life ended as he commited seppuku on a cliff overseeing the oceans of Kyushu. His rebellion was small, the Meiji government kept alive the tradition of arming only it's soldiers, leaving it's citizens, many of whom would have joined Saigo's rebellion because it was organized on the southernmost island of the Japanese island chian, powerless to lend support to the side they beleived in. Industry had won over tradition.

Of course, many people say, "Well sad as that is, industry was the best thing for Japan.". That logic only works until the year 1945 If they hadn't given in to pressure to industrialize so quickly, if the people had been able to actually keep thier own damn government in check, I think the whole Hiroshima/Nagasaki thing may have been overted.

So, in sumation, guns used to secure peace in land, but kept from people afterwards leading to many years of peace, but peace under tyrannical rule and often very poor living conditions. Guns brought back to usher in Meiji restoration, again everything looks splendid, people even begin to live under better conditions than before, but when Hirohito rises to power, again the people without arms to match their government are helpless to stop the warmonger from trying to expand into China, Korea, Russia and the ultimate act of stupidity, attacking Pearl Harbor. Result: Two bombs, many deaths.

And modern Japan? People enjoy the comfort of living in cubes, sleeping in drawers and paying for fresh oxygen. And why? Because the general populace has been unarmed and therefor unable to keep thier own government in check since the end of the Sengoku period, and a good deal before that, actually.

Whew. Was that a little better than quoting a movie? Cause I honestly don't think anyone's going to know about half of what I wrote.