 Although severely injured by shrapnel through his left thigh during the fighting, he was extremely impressed with the firepower of the Royal Navy and the amount of material damage that only a few vessels were able to inflict on Kagoshima.On recovery, he enlisted in the Satsuma Navy, and present at all of the major naval engagements associated with the Boshin War to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate, as commander of the Satsuma warship .After the Meiji Restoration and the absorption of the various feudal navies into central government control, Inoue reenlisted as a lieutenant in the fledgling Imperial Japanese Navy, serving on the , rising to the position of executive officer by 1872, and returning to the "Kasuga" again as its captain in 1874.