As the political events of the 1850s and 1860s proved, this alignment
of forces had particularly fateful consequences. So, too, did the issue
of the arms race. The history of Japan would have been quite different
without them. Yet the Tempo crisis produced something far more
fateful than either. In 1837 Oshio Heihachiro had begun his Gekibun
by lamenting the disappearance of the emperor from Japanese political
life: "From the time of the Ashikaga," he wrote, "the emperor has
been kept in seclusion and has lost the power to dispense rewards and
punishments; the people have therefore nowhere to turn with their
complaints." Before another decade had passed, this situation was to
change dramatically, as the imperial symbol was the obvious refuge -
indeed the only possible refuge - for those wishing to justify political
opposition. Increasingly, during the Tempo era, they sought shelter in
it, and none more persistently than Tokugawa Nariaki. Privately, he
lobbied with the court in Kyoto; publicly, he displayed his boundless
respect by demanding that the bakufu repair the imperial mausolea.
His scholars meanwhile worked feverishly to remind the nation that a
government established by imperial consent could be disestablished
by the same means.