Who was the last samurai?

The man most often given that title is Saigō Takamori, who is often referred to as "the last true samurai". He was born into a low-ranking samurai family in Satsuma, rose as a retainer of its lord, and later helped bring down the shogunate. Then, in 1877, he led the Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government. It lasted from 29 January until 24 September 1877, when it was decisively crushed and Saigō was shot and mortally wounded.

Why did he rebel against a government he had helped build? Modernisation meant the abolition of the privileged status of the samurai and had undermined their finances. Saigō had pushed for war with Korea in 1873, and when his plan was rejected, he resigned and went home to Kagoshima, as did many other Satsuma ex-samurai. There he founded a private academy, which grew to 132 branches. In January 1877 the government sent a warship to remove weapons from the Kagoshima arsenal, and with the elimination of samurai stipends that provoked open conflict. Saigō was only reluctantly persuaded to lead it.

The title "last samurai" is also a legend. At Shiroyama, the imperial army outnumbered Saigō 60 to 1. The popular story says he died by seppuku, but his autopsy showed no abdominal wounds consistent with it; he was probably too crippled by gunshot wounds, and an associate beheaded him to prevent capture. Legends even claimed he had escaped to China or India, or had become the planet Mars.

The rebellion effectively ended the samurai class and ushered in modern warfare, fought by conscript soldiers instead of military nobles.