The Boshin War was a Japanese civil conflict fought between 1868 and 1869, with some peripheral provinces of Japan rebelling against the Tokugawa Shogunate in Edo, modern Tokyo. It was sparked by the American general Commodore Perry who bombarded the coast with a navy to force the Japanese Shogun to end his isolationist policy, and open the country to trade. This was the final nail in the coffin for the regime which was seen as inefficient and corrupt by the Samurai who were meant to be loyal to it. Some provinces to the west of Japan rebelled and forced the Shogun to surrender, despite being outnumbered at first. Some 100,000 men were mobilised but the war was relatively bloodless, as the Shogunate already knew its days were numbered from long before the war. 

There is a commonly held stereotype that the Shogunate was comprised of armies of backwards samurai wielding swords and bows while the western rebels were fully modernised, but as with most "modern vs traditional" military legends, such as the tale of Polish cavalry charging German tanks, the truth is greyer. Militias on both sides of the Boshin War would wield a variety of weapons, but the majority of soldiers on both sides carried modern rifles. Even in the Sengoku period, Japan was well accustomed to producing and using firearms, and at one point in the 1700s, the most accurate muskets in the world were produced in Japan. 

Japan had already been modernised to an extent before the Americans arrived, but after the Boshin war, the Samurai sought to modernise their country through and through by visiting other countries to see how they were run. For instance, the current Japanese government still uses a constitution similar to the French one, and its structure is similar to the German one, with two separate houses. The Samurai then abolished their own class, as there were some 2 million of them at the twilight of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and they saw their hereditary existence as detrimental to the modernisation of their country. This is perhaps the only example of upper class popular revolt against social hierarchy.

The soldier in this image is wearing Tokugawa era samurai armour, but lacking some of the paraphernalia such as greaves and pauldrons, leaving the hakama or trousers loose, rather than bundled at the ankle as was traditional. She is also wearing a headband reading "Sonno Joi", the slogan of the rebel faction in the Boshin War, calling to expel westerners and restore the Emperor to power over the Shogun.