A few months prior to the setting out of the Formosan Expedition there had been an insurrection in Saga, the chief town of the Hizen province, led by Yeto Shimpei, who had not long before been a member of the new Government. The rising had been very quickly suppressed, and without much bloodshed, but it was an indication that the policy of the new administration met with scant favour in some of the regions remote from the metropolis, where the spirit of the people was, for want of wider knowledge, very averse to what were viewed as pernicious innovations based upon a wholesale introduction of Occidental manners and customs. Though the antipathy to foreign methods subsided with the punishment of the foremost of the Saga insurgents, the embers were not wholly extinguished, and less than three years later they burst once more into flame at Kagoshima, as will presently appear, and in the meantime the growing hostility in Satsuma to the proceedings of the Tokio Cabinet revealed itself in a variety of ways, though it was the policy of the administration to avoid the danger of driving matters to extremities with the warlike clansmen of the extreme south, at the head of whom stood Saigo Takamori, then resident on his own farm in the vicinity of the castle town which was the Satsuma stronghold and the headquarters of its quasi-independent military organisation. Nevertheless, the clansmen continued their regular drilling and set utterly at naught the remonstrances of the Tokio Government. Affairs in Satsuma reached their climax in February 1877, when a march to Kioto was decided upon, the military cadets and the clansmen, mustering over 12,000, having resolved on accompanying their leader Saigo Takamori on a journey to the Western capital ostensibly to beg for the intervention of his Majesty in respect of the grievances which Satsuma claimed to be enduring at the hands of the existing Tokio Government. The telegraph promptly carried the news to Kioto of the departure of this formidable force from Kagoshima, and preparations were instantly made to oppose its progress. The Emperor proclaimed Saigo and his followers to be in rebellion, and the Emperor’s uncle, Prince Arisugawa, was directed to inflict punishment on the offenders. The incidents of the campaign in Kiushiu which ensued are set forth at length elsewhere in this volume, and order was not restored in the southern island until the autumn of the year, after a period of the most disastrous strife in which Satsuma was a house divided against itself, inasmuch as there were many of the clan who remained faithful to the imperial standard, notably the younger Saigo, afterwards marquis, and Admiral Kawamura, who commanded the imperial fleet.