of
establishing a system of administration was proceeded with at Kyoto.

A constitution was drawn up, detailing the various departments of the
government, and the duties of the officers in each. These departments
were: 1. Of supreme administration; 2. of the Shinto religion; 3. of home
affairs; 4. of foreign affairs; 5. of war; 6. of finance; 7. of judicial
affairs; 8. of legislative affairs. This scheme underwent several changes,
and for a long time was regarded as only tentative.

The ablest men in the movements which were now in progress were afraid of
the traditions of indulgence and effeminacy which attached to the court at
Kyoto. In order to restore the government to a true and self-respecting
basis, it seemed necessary to cut loose from the centuries of seclusion in
which the emperor had remained, and enter upon the work of governing the
empire as a serious and solemn task. It was in this spirit that Okubo
Toshimichi of Satsuma, one of the ablest of the statesmen of the new era,
made in 1868 a novel and startling proposition. It was in a memorial(319)
addressed by him to the emperor. He proposed that the emperor should
abandon the traditions which had grown up respecting his person and his
court, and rule his empire with personal supervision. To do this
successfully, he recommended that the capital be transferred from the
place of its degrading superstitions to a new home. He suggested that
Osaka be the place selected.

If the emperor's court had been under the same influences as had governed
it in past years, such a proposition would have been received with horror.
Perhaps even the bold proposer would have been deemed fit for the ceremony
of _hara-kiri_. But the men who surrounded the emperor belonged to a
different school, and the emperor himself, although he was still an
inexperienced youth, had already begun to breathe the freer air of a new
life. The proposition was welcomed, and led to the great change which
followed. After discussion and consideration it was determined that the
emperor should make his residence not in Osaka, which would have been a
great and impressive change, but in Yedo, where for two hundred and fifty
years the family of Ieyasu had wielded the destinies of the empire. By
this change more than any other was emphasized the fact that hereafter the
executive as well as the ultimate power was to be found in the same
imperial hands.

Acting on these principles the emperor followed his vic