What if Saigo Takamori won.
He would have to avoid the seige he got caught up in and keep his army moving, so that the Meiji government forces couldn't trap him and go right to Tokyo.
Hard but not impossible. One odd thing about Takamori is even though he was willing to start a war with the Koreans to use the Samurai, he had an odd sympathy for other countries dignity (he had at one point married an Ryukuan Islander) and had pointed to Scandinavia as an easier and more dignified model for Japan, able to defend itself but not Imperialist itself and perhaps raising up Korea as an ally.
That would be very different.