The New Writing School lived in the last years of the Japanese shogunate, during the Opium War in China, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and the beginning of the Westernization Movement. At that time, Japan was closed to the outside world by the Tokugawa era, and only traded with China, North Korea and the Netherlands. Under this closed and backward system, some people in Japan have already begun to learn western civilization through various channels, advocate the open policy and learn from the West. In the early days, this trend of thought did not have much influence on Japanese society. However, China's defeat in the Opium War, especially in 1856, when Perry's fleet threatened Japan to open its ports by force, made the Japanese feel that the western powers had reached their doorstep, so the ideological trend of reforming Japan's old feudal system and learning from western civilization began to gradually prevail. Many people had hoped that the shogunate could set up an emperor to carry out reforms, but the shogunate wanted to continue to maintain the backward feudal system for its own benefit. The reformists (reformists) were completely disappointed with the shogunate and played the banner of "respecting the king and rejecting foreign countries", which meant overthrowing the Tokugawa era internally and safeguarding national sovereignty externally. This group is made up of enlightened lower fighters. On the other hand, some veterans do not want to overthrow the shogunate, and the new writers belong to this group. They opposed the reformists' ideas and the "King-respecting" group's maintenance of the old feudal system. The old school represents backwardness, but this does not mean that all the people who maintain the backward system are bad people. There are also many heroes among these people, so it is inaccurate to measure these historical figures by the standards of good people and bad people. The old-school people are actually moving against the historical trend, and they are doomed to fail. However, sometimes their persistence in faith is admirable.

Have you seen The Last Samurai? The "curtain-protecting" groups, such as the new writers, are sometimes a bit like the last samurai in the movie and a bit like the tragic heroes described in ancient Greek dramas.