Behind the Scenes - End of the Samurai (Patreon)

This series really had its genesis with an evening walk I took with my wife while visiting Kyoto in 2015. Wandering out of Gion where we were staying and to the promenade along the Takase River, we had no goal other than enjoying the lantern light, getting a late-night snack, and maybe seeing a few early Halloween decorations.

Instead, we found ourselves swept up in a political drama from a century and a half before.

As we walked, we ran across the historical marker marking the site of Sakamoto Ryoma's assassination, then a block more and we hit the dual monuments to Sakuma Shozan and Omura Masujiro, killed at nearly the same spot, but five years apart.

This blew my mind, since I'd always been taught the Meiji Restoration had been a relatively bloodless affair given the amount and pace of change—but it turned out "relatively" was carrying a lot more weight in that sentence than I realized.

That was the genesis of End of the Samurai, a series that looks at the political turmoil, uncertainty, and partisan violence of the Meiji Restoration—reminding us that in retrospect history looks a lot more clean and inevitable than it does to those living it.

...man I miss traveling... - Rob