i in 1861 the boy shogun had been under his
guardianship. Since then that duty had been devolved upon Hitotsubashi, a
son of the diamyo of Mito, who had been himself strongly pressed for the
office of shogun, but who was alleged to be too mature and resolute a
character for the prime minister's purposes. As guardian, Hitotsubashi had
taken an active part in the effort to obtain the sanction of the treaties,
and the final success of this important step must in a great measure be
attributed to him.

After the death of Iemochi without direct heirs, the office of shogun was
offered to Hitotsubashi as a representative of Mito, one of the "honorable
families" from whom a shogun was to be chosen in case of a failure of
direct heirs. It is said that he accepted the office with great
reluctance, knowing the troubles which would surely await him who assumed
it. He assented only on the command of the emperor and the assurance of
support from many of the diamyos. He has thus the distinction of becoming
the last of the long line of Tokugawa shoguns, under the name of Tokugawa
Yoshinobu.(309)

A few months after the death of Iemochi, on the 3d of February, 1867,
Emperor Komei also died from an attack of small-pox. He is said to have
been strongly prejudiced against foreigners and foreign intercourse, and
it was claimed at the time of his death, that when he sanctioned the
foreign treaties the divine nature left him to fall a prey to the ravages
of ordinary disease. His son Mutsuhito, then in his fifteenth year,
succeeded him and is now the reigning emperor, the one hundred and
twenty-first of his line.

[Illustration]

The Reigning Emperor.

It was thought that the death of an emperor of strong prejudices and of a
mature age would naturally favor a more complete control by the new
shogun. It was not to be anticipated that an emperor, still only a youth,
would pursue the same policy as his father, and undertake to assume a real
and active part in the government of his country. But the shogun and his
friends underrated the influences which were gathered at Kyoto, and which
now went far beyond an anti-foreign sentiment and were chiefly concerned
with schemes for restoring the imperial power and unifying the form of
government.

The daimyo of Tosa, who was a man of liberal sentiments and of great
penetration, addressed a letter to the shogun in October, 1867, in which
he fr