Tokugawa .
Shogun was at least symbolically below the Emperor in status and he claimed to rule so he could carry out .
the Imperial .
rule.Footnote3 .
Within this historical context the Meiji leaders realized that they needed to harness the .
concept of the Imperial Will in .
order to govern effectively. In the years leading up to 1868 members of the Satsuma and Choshu clans were .
part of the .
imperialist opposition. This opposition claimed that the only way that Japan could survive the .
encroachment of the .
foreigners was to rally around the Emperor.Footnote4 The Imperialists, claimed that the Tokugawa .
Shogunate had lost its .
imperial mandate to carry out the Imperial Will because it had capitulated to Western powers by allowing .
them to open up .
Japan to trade. During this time the ideas of the imperialists gained increasing support among Japanese .
citizens and .
intellectuals who taught at newly established schools and wrote revisionist history books that claimed .
that historically the .
Emperor had been the ruler of Japan.Footnote5 The fact that the Tokugawa's policy of opening up Japan to .
the western .
world ran counter to the beliefs of the Emperor and was unpopular with the public made the Tokugawa .
vulnerable to attack .
from the imperialists. The imperialists pressed their attack both militarily and from within the Court of .
Kyoto. The great .
military regime of Edo which until recently had been all powerful was floundering not because of military .
weakness, or .
because the machinery of government had broken but instead because the Japanese public and the Shoguns .
supporters felt .
they had lost the Imperial Will.Footnote6 .
The end of the Tokugawa regime shows the power of the symbolism and myths surrounding the .
imperial institution. .
The head of the Tokugawa clan died in 1867 and was replaced by the son of a lord who was a champion of .
Japanese .
historical studies and who agreed with the imperialists claims about restoring the Emperor.