Is the movie The Last Samurai a true story?

The Last Samurai (English: The Last Samurai) is a movie released in 2003 that depicts the story of a former U.S. serviceman, who goes to Japan to work as an instructor for the New Japanese Army, which was formed to help with the Meiji New Deal, and is captured on the way to the war, and slowly becomes attracted to traditional Japanese culture and joins the ranks of the rebels in their duel with the government forces.

The duel between samurai swords and Western-style guns happens twice in the movie. In the first showdown, the government troops are still armed with British-made Model 1853 Enfield front-bore guns. It took 10 seconds for a soldier to load and fire a shot, and when faced with rebel samurai shouting madly on the battlefield, his hands trembled with nervousness, and it took nearly 30 seconds for a second shot to be fired, when it was too late.

However, when the samurai faced the government forces again a year later, they had already bought newer weapons from the U.S. Just as the samurai were breaking through the line of artillery and rifles, the government forces unveiled their own "secret weapon": the 10-regulation Gatling machine gun. Lined up on the hillside, the 10-barrel machine guns poured death at a rate of 200 rounds per minute.

The prototype of "The Last Samurai" is Saigo Takamori, one of Japan's "Three Greats". After the Meiji Restoration, Toshimichi Okubo's regime pursued a policy of modernization and took a series of measures to deprive the samurai of their political and economic privileges; in January 1873, he issued the "Conscription Order," which deprived the samurai of their monopoly over the military. This was followed by the "abolition of the sword" and the "cutting off of hair", which signified the deprivation of the honor and privilege of the samurai, the "soul of the samurai". In The Last Samurai, the scene in which a young samurai's hair is forcibly cut off and his sword taken away by the government police is a depressing and humiliating one, and historically it was indeed the trigger for the samurai's growing dissatisfaction with the Meiji government, which resulted in the rise of samurai rebellions throughout the country.

As Tom Cruise, the film's star, once said, "The movie is a fictional story, but the place where it takes place and the spirit of the samurai shown in the movie are real!"