The Tokugawa shogunate, which had controlled military and civil affairs in Japan's feudal provinces for some three centuries, proved unable to meet the new challenge of open trade with the West.

On 22 January 1858, Daigaku-no-kami Hayashi Akira headed the bakufu delegation which sought advice from Emperor Kōmei in deciding how to deal with newly assertive foreign powers.

The most easily identified consequence of this transitional overture would be the increased numbers of messengers streaming back and forth between Edo and Kyoto during the next decade.

[10] Concerning these difficult Imperial audiences in Kyoto, it is somewhat remarkable that the shogun and his bakufu were represented by Hayashi Akira, a 19th-century neo-Confucian scholar/bureaucrat who might have been somewhat surprised to find himself at a crucial nexus of managing political change—moving arguably "by the book" through uncharted waters with well-settled theories and history as the only reliable guide.

[12] The pilgrimage of the 14th shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to Kyoto in 1863 was a defining moment not only in 19th century relations between the military bakufu and the Imperial Court, but also in what history would come to call the Meiji Restoration.

[14] The treaties stipulated that the citizens of those foreign nations would be allowed to reside and trade at will in the cities of Edo, Nagasaki, Niigata, Kobe and Yokohama.

Emperor Kōmei generally agreed with anti-Western sentiments, and, breaking with centuries of imperial tradition, began to take an active role in matters of state.

[16] Other incidents included the bombardments of Shimonoseki and Kagoshima, and the destruction of Japanese warships, coastal guns, and assorted military infrastructure throughout the country.

British diplomat Sir Ernest Satow wrote, "it is impossible to deny that [the Emperor Kōmei's] disappearance from the political scene, leaving as his successor a boy of fifteen or sixteen [actually fourteen], was most opportune".

Japan was also surrounded by colonial powers, who stood poised to gain considerable influence with substantial investments in Japanese trade.

[citation needed] After Kōmei's death in 1867, his kami was enshrined in the Imperial mausoleum, Nochi no Tsukinowa no Higashi no misasagi (後月輪東山陵), which is at Sennyū-ji in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto.

Also enshrined in this mausoleum complex are Kōmei's immediate predecessors since Emperor Go-Mizunoo: Meishō, Go-Kōmyō, Go-Sai, Reigen, Higashiyama, Nakamikado, Sakuramachi, Momozono, Go-Sakuramachi, Go-Momozono, Kōkaku and Ninkō.

[citation needed] Kugyō (公卿) is a collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras.