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‘The Restoration’ is that epoch-making event in the history of Japan that gave to her people the pre-eminent position in the Far East of being, as far as forms of government go, the professed and allied companion of the most powerful nations of the West. It meant also that the Emperor’s influence over Japan was brought back to the form and power that it held at the time of the first Emperor Jimmu, who reigned B.C. 660–584, and the Imperial Proclamation of the 14th of December, 1867 (3rd year of Kei-o), declares that its development is re-established upon the same basis as that laid 2,527 years ago.

The existence of the Shogunate since 1187 (2nd year of Bunji) under the Emperor’s authority gave a singular feature to the governmental system of Japan, and led to much misapprehension. That there reigned two Emperors contemporaneously over Japan, one ‘spiritual’ and the other ‘secular,’ was an idea which misled the outside world for centuries to an erroneous conception of Japan’s government. The real situation will be understood if it is remembered that the Shogun, the head of the Shogunate, was always appointed by the Emperor, and exercised in his name only the civil and military administration of the country, which were accredited to him as the hereditary right of his family. Thus, what are called the ‘rights of sovereignty’ have remained uninterruptedly in the person of the Emperor since the foundation of the Japanese Empire.

When the first Emperor Jimmu conquered the country and founded the empire, he, as head of the State, combined in himself the rights of sovereignty and supreme command of the army and navy, as the present Emperor does now according to the provisions of the Constitution. The Emperor Jimmu appointed from among his followers his Ministers of State, who