Ueno Park

This guide to Ueno Park in Tokyo starts with a battlefield: on July 4, 1868, loyalist warriors called the Shogitai dug in around the temple of Kanei-ji and fought government troops led by the samurai commander Saigo Takamori, until artillery set the temple ablaze. It then turns to the bronze statue of Saigo by the pond, unveiled in 1898, and to his widow's reaction upon seeing it in the crowd that day. Listen for how little the statue resembles the disciplined man she remembered.