The Last Samurai draws on a few different stories of the Bakamatsu/Meiji era and combines them into one story.

Tom Cruise's character is based off of Jules Brunet, the leader of a group of French officers that opted to stay in Japan when France withdrew its military mission to the Tokugawa shogunate when the Boshin War broke out. Brunet and his men continued to support the Shogunate forces, following them northward to help organize and lead the military of the Ezo Republic that would be formed by remnant Shogunate forces in Hakodate. Hakodate surrendered in 1869, and Brunet was back in home in France by 1870.

The general story, however, is closer to the post-Meiji-Restoration Satsuma Rebellion. The Satsuma Rebellion took place in 1877 after close to a decade of government reform and reorganization in an attempt to rapidly modernize Japan. The Satsuma Rebellion was a backlash against these reforms, primarily the result of policies that were deeply unpopular with the now-defunct Samurai class - particularly the decision to eliminate the traditional stipends that Samurai had become accustomed to during the Tokugawa Shogunate. The rebellion managed to pull in Saigo Takamori - hero of the Boshin War - but after brief successes in southern Kyushu, they were defeated by a westernized force of government troops employing western small arms, artillery, and even Gatling guns.

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Now, getting to the concept of heritage versus westernization - the issue was much, much more complicated than that. The Bakamatsu era was defined by that very issue, and oddly enough it would be the Imperial Loyalists that ultimately would overthrow the Shogun that were far more xenophobic. However, in the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, it quickly became apparent to all involved - even the extremely xenophobic Satsuma and Choshu clans - that the Western Powers were too powerful for the foreigners to be ejected immediately. Leadership on both sides moved to westernize their forces, procuring foreign arms and ships and relying on foreign officers to train and organize their men. If the bombardments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki didn't go far enough to prove the superiority of Western arms over the traditional Japanese methods, the battles of the Boshin War would. Starting with Toba-Fushimi, where more traditional Shogunate-loyal troops were stopped in their tracks by a much smaller force of modernized Satsuma and Choshu troops, the war proved time and again that Western artillery and rifles outpaced the Japanese methods of fighting that had been stagnating for the past 250 years.

Unfortunately, while leadership during the Bakamatsu and early Meiji era very much recognized that the country needed to rapidly modernize to avoid the same fate as China, it was much more difficult to convey that to the general population. Even the Emperor was undermining more practical efforts, with Emperor Komei putting the Shogunate in a difficult position by issuing an edict demanding that the Shogun eject all foreigners from the country by May 1863 - an order that the Shogunate very well knew it could not enforce. Violence became extremely common, with "Imperial Loyalist" elements targeting "Shogunate Loyalist" factions and trying to force the expulsion of foreigners. Part of the Shogun's efforts to keep the peace involved the establishment of the Shinsengumi - a group of Ronin sent to Kyoto to act as a police force - but they themselves, despite being a secret police force for the Shogun, were by no means a pro-foreign power.

This dichotomy between practical necessity recognized by the upper leadership and the general resistance to change by the larger population continued into the early Meiji era. The soon-to-be-defunct Samurai class was impacted especially hard, as the major reorganizations by the government often involved revoking centuries-old privileges. These included their dominance as soldiers (done away with starting with the creation of units like the Kihetai, which recruited from all classes rather than just Samurai), their right to carry swords (which was revoked with the imposition of heavy restrictions on weapons) and, most importantly, the revoking of their stipends. During the Tokugawa era, Samurai received stipends to allow them to live comfortably without working - the idea being that it allowed them to properly train and prepare for war. These stipends were incredibly expensive given the millions of Samurai in the country, and, although the Meiji government would initially attempt to preserve this status, by 1877 the situation became untenable and the stipends were ended, sparking the Satsuma Rebellion.