They did have a number of things in common; according to Andrew Gordon, “It was precisely their intermediate status and their insecure salaried position, coupled with their sense of frustrated ambition and entitlement to rule, that account for the revolutionary energy of the Meiji insurgents and their far-reaching program of reform”.
Although from lower-ranked samurai families, they had risen to military leadership roles in their respective domains, and came from a Confucian-based educational background which stressed loyalty and service to society.
As a result, they knew of the military superiority of the western nations and of the need for Japan to unify, and to strengthen itself to avoid the colonial fate of its neighbors on the Asian continent.
However, immediately after the resignation of Tokugawa Yoshinobu in 1867, with no official centralized government, the country was a collection of largely semi-independent daimyōs controlling feudal domains, held together by the military strength of the Satchō Alliance, and by the prestige of the Imperial Court in Kyoto.
In early March 1868, with the outcome of the Boshin War still uncertain, the new Meiji government summoned delegates from all of the domains to Kyoto to establish a provisional consultative national assembly.
This administrative code was drafted by Fukuoka Takachika and Soejima Taneomi (both of whom had studied abroad and who had a liberal political outlook), and was a mixture of western concepts such as division of powers, and a revival of ancient structures of bureaucracy dating back to Nara period.
Local government in Japan consisted of area confiscated from the Tokugawa, administered from the Department of Civil Affairs, and 273 semi-independent domains.
In the spring of 1871, Ōkubo, Kido, Inoue Kaoru, Yamagata Aritomo, Saigō Takamori, Ōyama Iwao, Sanjō Sanetomi and Iwakura held a secret meeting during which it was decided to proceed with abolition of the han domains entirely.
Later that year, all of the ex-daimyō were summoned to the Emperor, and he issued a decree converting the domains to prefectures headed by a bureaucratic appointee from the central government.
As the local assemblies only had the power of debate, and not legislation, they provided an important safety valve, without the ability to challenge the authority of the central government.
A major proponent of representative government was Itagaki Taisuke, a powerful leader of Tosa forces who had resigned from his Council of State position over the Korean affair in 1873.
Itagaki and others wrote the Tosa Memorial in 1874 criticizing the unbridled power of the oligarchy and calling for the immediate establishment of representative government.
Dissatisfied with the pace of reform after having rejoined the Council of State in 1875, Itagaki organized his followers and other democratic proponents into the nationwide Aikokusha (Society of Patriots) to push for representative government in 1878.
The Osaka Conference of 1875 resulted in the reorganization of government with an independent judiciary and an appointed Council of Elders tasked with reviewing proposals for a constitution.
Itō Hirobumi, one of the Meiji oligarchy and a Chōshū native long involved in government affairs, was charged with drafting Japan's constitution.
Five hundred persons from the old court nobility, former daimyō, samurai and commoners who had provided valuable service to the government were organized in five ranks: prince, marquis, count, viscount, and baron.
To further strengthen the authority of the state, the Supreme War Council was established under the leadership of Yamagata Aritomo a Chōshū native who has been credited with the founding of the modern Imperial Japanese Army and was to become the first constitutional Prime Minister.
The House of Representatives was popularly elected with a very limited franchise of male citizens who paid 15 yen in national taxes (about 1 percent of the population) being eligible candidates.
The new constitution specified a form of government that was still authoritarian in character, with the Emperor holding the ultimate power and only minimal concessions made to popular rights and parliamentary mechanisms.
A small clique of Satsuma and Chōshū elite continued to rule Japan, becoming institutionalized as an extraconstitutional body of genrō (elder statesmen).
After the bitter political rivalries between the inception of the Diet in 1890 and 1894, when the nation was unified for the war effort against China, there followed five years of unity, unusual cooperation, and coalition cabinets.
Reforms of electoral laws, an expansion of the House to 369 members, and provisions for secret ballots won Diet support for Yamagata's budgets and tax increases.
The end of the Meiji era was marked by huge government domestic and overseas investments and military programs, nearly exhausted credit, and a lack of foreign exchange to pay debts.