"Yae no Sakura" is about a woman warrior named Yae Niijima (1845-1932) from Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture...

Aizu-Wakamatsu is famous for Tsurugajo Castle and as the site of a Boshin War battle between pro-Emperor forces and pro-shogun forces who lost. Yae was on the latter side. After the war, she fought for equality for women and mastered English well enough to help with the English typesetting of Kyoto's earliest English guidebooks (written by her brother and translated into English by a translator).
Her husband Joseph Hardy Neesima or Jo Niijima had studied in the US and founded a Christian school which became the prestigious Doshisha University in Kyoto.