ABSTRACT
The year 1868 was a time of extreme trials for the new Meiji government. Perhaps because these trials were ultimately weathered, historians have tended to underemphasise their importance, and the importance of the civil war itself. Within the new government there were two closely balanced opposing forces: the group led by Chōshū and Satsuma leaders, chiefly Ōkubo Toshimichi, Saigō Takamorj, both of Satsuma, and Kido Kōin of Chōshū, and usually associated with the crafty and influential court noble Iwakura Tomomi. This group is often called in Japanese buryoku tōbaku-ha (the faction favouring bringing down the Bakufu—the Shogunate—by military force). For convenience, as this is a bit unwieldy in English, I will refer to this faction as the Ōkubo group. It is the party associated with a policy of thorough and uncompromising centralisation of the country under the Emperor, and, increasingly, with an anti-feudal policy and modernisation on the Western model.
