Entering the military service of the Nagato province at a very early age, Kido Jiunichiro proceeded to acquire a competent acquaintanceship with all those arts in which skill was demanded of the young samurai of the time, and in some he soon excelled. He was with the Choshiu men when they made their assault on Kioto, and was daring enough to remain behind at that capital and headquarters of his lord’s political opponents after the rest of the Choshiu forces had been compelled to beat a retreat to their own territory. It was at Kido’s house, on a later date, that the reconciliation which had such stupendous consequences for Japan as a nation between the clans of Satsuma and Choshiu was quietly arranged to the satisfaction of all parties, the two Satsuma leaders Kuroda and Oyama going to him and consulting with him, as the representative of Choshiu, in reference to joint action which had for its object the overthrow of the Shogunate and the re-establishment of the imperial regime. When the new government was set up Kido, together with Goto Shojiro, of Tosa, and Komatsu Tatewaki, of Satsuma, were made _Ko-mon_, or advisers, of the So-Sai,—the title then conferred on the official head of the administration, but which is now applied to the president of a board,—and as it rested with the So-Sai to give or refuse the imperial consent to all measures proposed by the other departments of State, the position of _Ko-mon_ was one of great power and responsibility. It will be understood that at this time the present sovereign had only just come to the throne, and that the establishment of the imperial government at Kioto was the outcome of the resignation of his office of Shogun by the present Prince Tokugawa Keiki, who had a few weeks before surrendered his rights and privileges and retired into private life, though his adherents were still fighting beyond Tokio, and the war of the Restoration was not yet over. The Emperor, of course, was still in residence at the Kioto Dairi, or palace, and Kido realised that before a settled order of things could be hoped for the feudal system must be abolished, root and branch. He clearly perceived the necessity for centralisation as a first step in the direction of the introduction of a constitutional regime, and, with Kido, to see his duty before him was to act. The daimio of Choshiu, his own chieftain, was then at Yamaguchi, and by way of estimating the chances of success for the bold proposal by which he was resolved to stand or fall, Kido set out for that distant town, determined to ascertain first of all how the lord Mori might be disposed to view so audacious a proposition as that to be submitted for the consideration of the territorial magnates.