The rebellion led by Katsumoto in the movie is supposed to be a scaled down version of the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion led by SAIGO Takamori. It's a shame that the moviemakers didn't take that more seriously, because the uprising, known in Japanese as the "Southwestern war," was a true crisis. Every resource of the new government was called upon, including its modernized shipping lines, rail transport, police forces (who were reorganized into military units), samurai volunteers, officer trainees, and fiscal reserves (the Matsukata Deflation of the early 1880s was partly necessary because of the excessive costs of putting down the rebellion). The rebels, protesting the loss of the traditional privileges and domainal autonomy, were quite well-armed, having seized several local armories early in the uprising: many of their officers were trained in modern methods, and they led both artillery units and riflemen. The rebels were only outnumbered by two-to-one; there wasn't a long, tense run-up to the conflict, as the movie insists; Saigo Takamori was not the leader at the beginning; and the fight ran constantly from February through September, rather than being a pair of battles separated by winter storms. There were other samurai uprisings in the years leading up to the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, some of which actually resemble the movie more closely, at least in terms of scale and the ease with which they were suppressed. But none of the others were led by men who had been Imperial advisors, as Saigo had been. After 1877 there were no more samurai uprisings. (For more details on Saigo, see Mark Ravina's biography, The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, which is currently selling considerably better than the official movie guide.)