In this tradition of poetry, Shiki's poem, which looked at reality and wrote about the persimmons around him, was revolutionary. This poem was highly praised, and Shiba also chose Shiki, who idealized "sketching" and tried to see the world as it is, as one of the protagonists.
Many of Shiba's other works feature protagonists with a rational mind, such as Omura Masujiro in "Kagami" (Flower God), Eto Shinpei in "Years," and Saito Dosan in "Kunitori Monogatari" (The Tale of the Conquest of the Country). While Shiba portrayed both sides of the human spirit, we can see that he highly valued realism, which does not close one's eyes to see beauty, but rather opens one's eyes to see reality.
In fact, the criticism of the Satsuma people that Saneyuki makes in "Clouds remove background image Above the Hill" is also criticism of the "god of war" Togo Heihachiro, who was from Satsuma. After the Russo-Japanese War, Togo became godlike and began saying, "One cannon that hits 100% can be used to counter 100 enemy cannons that hit 100%." This means that even if you only have one cannon, if it has a 100% hit rate, you cannot be defeated by an enemy with 100 cannons that hit 1%. However, if you think rationally, you can see that this is wrong. Even if you hit it with one shot and destroy one enemy cannon, the remaining 99 cannons will still come flying at you.