But among all the ladies of Japan to-day,--charming, intellectual, refined, and lovely as many of them are,--there is no one nobler, more accomplished, more beautiful in life and character, than the Empress herself. The Emperor of Japan, though he may have many concubines, may have but one wife, and she must be chosen out of one of the five highest noble families.[29] Haru Ko, of the noble family of Ichijō, became Empress in the year 1868, one year after her husband, then a boy of seventeen, had ascended the throne, and the very year of the overthrow of the Shōgunate,[30] and the restoration of the Emperor to actual power and the leading part in the government. Reared amid the deep and scholarly seclusion of the old court at Kyōto, the young Empress found herself occupying a position very different from that for which she had been educated,--a position the duties and responsibilities of which grow more multifarious as the years go by. Instead of a life of rigid seclusion, unseeing and unseen, the Empress has had to go forth into the world, finding there the pleasures as well as the duties of actual leadership. With the removal of the court to Tōkyō, and the reappearance of the Emperor, in bodily form, before his people, there came new opportunities for the Empress, and nobly has she used them. From the time when, in 1871, she gave audience to the five little girls of the samurai class who were just setting forth on a journey to America, there to study and fit themselves to play a part in the Japan of the future, on through twenty years of change and progress, the Empress Haru Ko has done all that lay within her power to advance the women of her country.[*157] Many stories are afloat which show the lovable character of the woman, and which have given her an abiding place in the affections of the people. [29] The Empresses of Japan are not chosen from any branch of the imperial family, but from among the daughters of the five of the great _kugé_, or court nobles, who are next in rank to the imperial princes. The choice usually rests with the Emperor or his advisers, and would be naturally given to the most worthy, whether in beauty or accomplishments. No doubt one reason why the Empress is regarded as far below the Emperor is, that she is not of royal blood, but one of the subjects of the Empire. In the old times, the daughters of the Emperor could never marry, as all men were far beneath them in rank. These usually devoted their lives to religion, and as Shintō priestesses or Buddhist nuns dwelt in the retirement of temple courts or the seclusion of cloisters.