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October 27–31, 1876 (Meiji 9)
Akizuki, Asakura District, Fukuoka Prefecture (present-day Akizuki, Asakura City) and Toyotsu (present-day Miyako Town, Fukuoka Prefecture)
Kräfte
Akizuki Party (former Akizuki domain shizoku)
Meiji government forces (Kokura garrison)
Etwa 8 Min. Lesedauer
In October 1876 (Meiji 9), former samurai (shizoku) of the old Akizuki domain in Fukuoka (present-day Akizuki, Asakura City) rose in rebellion against the Meiji government. Together with the Shinpūren Rebellion, the Hagi Rebellion, and the Saga Rebellion of the same era, it is remembered as one of the "four great shizoku rebellions of Meiji 9."
After the Meiji Restoration, the new government progressively stripped away the privileges of the samurai class as part of its modernization program. The Sword Abolition Edict (Haitōrei), issued in March 1876, banned the wearing of swords in public except by those in ceremonial dress, military personnel, and police, denying former samurai the right to openly carry the symbol of their status. In August of the same year, the Chitsuroku Shobun (Order for the Issuance of Commutation Bonds) abolished the hereditary stipends paid to shizoku, replacing them with government bonds of limited value. Having lost both their livelihood and the pride associated with their former status, discontent among former samurai in western Japan rapidly intensified.
On October 24, 1876, the Shinpūren (Keishintō), led by figures such as Ōtaguro Tomoo, rose in Kumamoto and attacked the commander of the Kumamoto garrison. In response, around 400 former Akizuki domain shizoku—including Miyazaki Shanosuke, Iso Jun, Tohara Yasuura, Iso Heihachi, Tonami Hankurō, Miyazaki Tetsunosuke, Toki Kiyoshi, Masuda Shizukata, and Imamura Hyakuhachirō—organized themselves as the "Akizuki party" and rose in arms three days later, on October 27.
The Akizuki party first killed police officer Honami Handayū, who had come to persuade them to stand down. The Akizuki shizoku had earlier arranged to rise simultaneously with shizoku of the neighboring former Toyotsu domain (Kokura Prefecture), led by Sugiu Jūrō, and marched toward Toyotsu.
On October 29, the Akizuki party reached Toyotsu, but the former Toyotsu shizoku had already decided against rising, and Sugiu and his fellow conspirators had been detained. While negotiations were underway, troops of the Kokura garrison under Nogi Maresuke, alerted by Toyotsu, attacked the Akizuki party, which was routed after fighting.
On October 31, the Akizuki party disbanded. Seven of its leading members, including Iso Jun, Miyazaki Shanosuke, and Toki Kiyoshi, took their own lives on the way back to Akizuki or shortly after arriving. Imamura Hyakuhachirō, who insisted on continued resistance, returned to Akizuki with 26 others, attacked the suppression headquarters set up at Akizuki Elementary School, killed two prefectural officials, and burned a sake warehouse being used to detain captured comrades, before scattering with his followers. He was captured on November 24.
On December 3, the Fukuoka provisional court handed down sentences; the ringleaders Imamura Hyakuhachirō and Masuda Shizukata were beheaded the same day, while roughly 150 others received prison sentences or had their samurai status stripped. Suppressed within barely a week of rising, the Akizuki Rebellion is remembered, alongside the Shinpūren, Hagi (led by Maebara Isei, also in October 1876), and Saga (led by Etō Shinpei, 1874) rebellions, as an act of desperate resistance by former samurai whose foundations of status had been swept away by the sword edict and stipend reforms.
The wave of shizoku rebellions in Meiji 9, including Akizuki, was directly triggered by fierce opposition to the sword abolition edict. For samurai denied the legal right to bear the sword that marked their status, the uprisings themselves were a last act of resistance against the end of sword-bearing culture. That these rebellions were suppressed one after another by garrison forces armed chiefly with firearms symbolized the decisive end of the samurai style of combat centered on the katana in the face of a modern military system. The following year, in the Satsunan (Seinan) War of 1877, some of Saigō Takamori's forces still fought with swords and spears, but were ultimately defeated by government forces equipped with modern weapons, bringing the age of the samurai to a definitive close.