Satsuma had benefited by its trade with Nagasaki, the only port that had remained accessible to vessels from Europe during the long seclusion of the nation from Western intercourse. In the year 1866 the British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, had accepted an invitation to visit the headquarters of the Satsuma clan, three years after the bombardment of the town of Kagoshima by Admiral Kuper’s squadron. The Minister made the voyage in the warship _Princess Royal_, accompanied by the _Serpent_ and the _Salamis_, and the young prince of Satsuma came off to welcome his guest in a magnificent state barge. Sir Harry Parkes, on landing at Kagoshima on the 27th July, found that adjoining the daimio’s palace within the castle walls were a foundry and well-equipped workshops, and that at the foundry they had succeeded in casting a number of very serviceable cannon, and quantities of shot and shell. Near by was a glass works, and in one of the workshops was a steam lathe. These facts afford strong testimony to the progressive spirit manifested even at that period by the Satsuma clan, and the appreciation of the value of Western appliances which had thus early in the history of the Restoration struggle prompted the samurai of Satsuma to fit themselves to attain a commanding position among the supporters of the Ten-shi, as opposed to those who favoured the regime of the Shogunate. The inability of the Shogun’s forces to subdue the Choshiu samurai had placed the Shogun himself in a position that was obviously intolerable. Not only was one of the most powerful of the feudal lords openly antagonistic to the Shogunate but it was known for a fact that the Satsuma clan was virtually allied to Choshiu in this effort to repudiate the Shogun’s right to exact obedience from the great feudatories. It is to the infinite credit of Tokugawa Keiki that at this crisis in his country’s affairs he recognised the need of a more centralised and uniform system of administration,—one in which the real power and control should be vested in the person of the Ten-shi. He resigned the office which had been in his family for 264 years, and begged that he might be permitted to retire into private life. The Emperor Mutsuhito accepted the voluntary surrender by the Shogun of his time-honoured privileges and in doing so opened a new chapter in the record of the Japanese Empire. The manifesto was in the sovereign’s own words and was substantially as follows:— It has pleased Us, at his request, to dismiss the Shogun. Henceforward We shall exercise supreme authority, in both the internal and the external affairs of the nation. For the term “Tycoon” (meaning Shogun) which has hitherto been employed in the Treaties must henceforth be substituted that of Emperor.