in the movie, the last samurai, which part is realistic in line with history and which part is just made up?

Question

i need to knw which part of the movie was fictional and which ones are trully based on japanese history

Answer 1

Can I just wiki-paste the answer for you, too?

Anyway, the director himself states the Last Samurai is entirely historical fiction. It's suppose to symbolize the changing times rather than chronicle an actual event.

Ken Watanabe's character is loosely based on Saigo Takamori who fought for the Emperor against forces loyal to the Tokugawa Shogunate. Saigo eventually led a rebellion against the new government but was defeated.

In Last Samurai the rebels used only traditional weaponry. Saigo however used modern weaponry unlike Watanabe's character.

No Westerners fought along side Saigo but in the earlier Boshin War (which Saigo's attitude help to create) some French soldiers fought with pro-Shogunate forces.

Answer 2

The Last Samurai is an action/drama film written by John Logan and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz based on a story by Logan. It was directed by Edward Zwick and released in the United States on December 5, 2003. The plot deals with American soldier Nathan Algren (played by Tom Cruise) whose personal and emotional conflicts bring him into contact with samurai in the wake of the Meiji Restoration in the Empire of Japan between 1876 and 1877.
The film's plot is loosely based on the 1877 Satsuma Rebellion led by Saigō Takamori, and also on the story of Jules Brunet, a French army captain who fought alongside Enomoto Takeaki in the Boshin War. The historical roles in Japanese westernization by the United Kingdom, Germany and France are largely attributed to the United States in the film, and characters in the film and the real story are simplified for plot purposes. While it is not an accurate source of historical information, the film illustrates some major issues in Japanese history
Historical perspective
The Last Samurai combines real but disconnected historical situations, rather distant in time, into a single narrative. It also replaces the key Western actors of the period (especially the French) by American ones. Finally, it portrays a radical conflict between ancient and modern fighting methods, but in reality all sides of the conflict (the Satsuma Rebellion, and before it the Boshin War) adopted modern equipment to various degrees. Many thematic, and visual elements of the film parallel the films of Akira Kurosawa, specifically Seven Samurai.
Military modernization and Western involvement
Training of the Shogunate troops by the French Military Mission to Japan. 1867 photograph.
The French military advisers and their Japanese allies in Hokkaido during the Boshin war (1868-1869). Front row, second from left: Jules Brunet, besides Matsudaira Taro, vice-president of the Ezo Republic.The kind of military modernization described in The Last Samurai was already largely achieved by the time of the Boshin War ten years before, in 1868. At that time, forces favourable to the Shogun were modernized and trained by the French Military Mission to Japan (1867), and a modern fleet of steam warships had already been constituted (Eight steam warships, Kaiten, Banryū, Chiyodagata, Chōgei, Kaiyō Maru, Kanrin Maru, Mikaho and Shinsoku formed the core of the Bakufu Navy in 1868). The Western fiefs of Satsuma and Chōshū were also already highly modernized, supported by British interests and expertise. Even the appearance of Gatling guns in Japan goes back to that time (the Gatling guns were invented in 1861, and deployed during the 1868-1869 Boshin War by both sides, at the Battle of Hokuetsu and the Naval Battle of Miyako). Modernization had already advanced at a fast pace during the Bakumatsu period, many years before the installation of the Meiji Emperor.
Although Commodore Perry is credited with opening Japan to foreign contacts in 1854, American involvement in Japan was minimal thereafter, partly due to the demands of the American Civil War (1861-1865). The main powers involved with the modernization of Japan up to the 1868 Meiji Restoration were the Netherlands, (initiation of a modern navy with the Nagasaki Naval Training Center and the supply of Japan's first modern ships, the Kankō Maru and the Kanrin Maru), France (Construction of the arsenal of Yokosuka by Léonce Verny, the 1867 French Military Mission), and Great Britain (in supplying modern equipment, especially ships, to a variety of domains).
Westerners fighting alongside Japanese
The French Navy officer Eugène Collache fought in samurai attire.Historically, the only major case of foreigners taking an active role in a Japanese civil war is that of the French military advisers under Jules Brunet (initially members of the 1867 French Military Mission), who joined the forces favourable to the Shogun under Enomoto Takeaki, during the Boshin war. They were deeply involved in the military organization of the Shogunal forces, and fought (several of them were heavily wounded) almost to end of the conflict. A few days before surrender, when the situation had become desperate, they left on the French frigate Coëtlogon which had been waiting at anchor in Hakodate. Some of these French officers did wear the samurai attire (such as the French Naval officer Eugène Collache), although most officers in the armies of the Bakufu, as well as of course their French colleagues, wore French military uniforms.
[edit] The Satsuma rebellion
Saigo Takamori (seated, in Western uniform), surrounded by his officers, in samurai attire. News article in Le Monde Illustré, 1877.The Satsuma Rebellion, the historical event described in The Last Samurai, was even more one-sided than in the movie, although the military techniques employed by each side were less contrasted. It occurred in 1877, ten years after the Boshin War, and ten years after the establishment of the Imperial Japanese army. The Imperial troops sent a huge force of 300,000 soldiers under Kawamura Sumiyoshi, modern in all aspects of warfare, using howitzers and observations balloons, to the island of Kyūshū to fight Saigō Takamori.
Saigō Takamori's rebels numbered around 40,000 in total, until they dwindled to about 400 at the final stand at the Battle of Shiroyama. Although they fought for the preservation of the caste of the samurai, and officers often wore samurai cuirasses, they did not neglect Western military methods: they used guns and cannons, and all contemporary depictions of Saigō Takamori represent him wearing the uniform of a Western general. At the end of the conflict, running out of material and ammunition, they had to fall back to close-quarter tactics and the use of swords, bows and arrows. In a parallel to the movie, they also fought for a more virtuous form of government (their slogan was "新政厚徳", "New government, High morality").
In contrast to the Boshin War, no Westerners are recorded to have fought on either side of the Satsuma rebellion. Specifically, Saigō Takamori did not fight side-by-side with foreign soldiers during the Satsuma Rebellion. During the Boshin War, Saigō may have been supported by British and American military advisors,[7] but the only documented case of foreigners actually fighting for a Japanese cause was that of the French soldiers supporting Enomoto Takeaki.

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