“Miya-san, Miya-san!“/宮さん宮さん, Japanese Patriotic Song of the Meiji Restoration, 1868-69

“Miya-san, Miya-san!“, or “Tonyare-bushi“, is one of the first modern Japanese patriotic/militaristic songs. Made sometime around the Meiji Restoration, approximately 1868-1869, the song’s about the Boshin War, to be exact the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, between the armies of the shogunate and the armies of the pro-Imperial faction, told from the pro-Imperial Satsuma-Chosu-Tosa-Hizen forces perspective. The Boshin War itself was a kind of a civil war that occurred following the formal declaration of the restora