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What happened in Kyoto on January 3, 1868?
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Meiji Restoration
After the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Meiji emperor became the formal head of a new imperial government under whose reign Japan was transformed from an isolated feudal society into a modern, industrialized global power.
On January 3, 1868, a group of radical samurai carried out a coup d’état in the imperial capital of Kyoto. During this event, the perpetrators seized the palace and formally declared an Imperial restoration.12
This action marked the official ouster of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last shogun, and proclaimed the young Meiji emperor as the direct ruler of Japan. While Yoshinobu initially agreed to accept the results of the coup, his advisers refused, leading to a brief civil war. This pivotal moment effectively ended the Tokugawa shogunate and initiated the political, social, and economic transformations of the Meiji period.12