 While Yoshinobu's resignation had created a nominal void at the highest level of government, his apparatus of state continued to exist. Moreover, the shogunal government, the Tokugawa family in particular, would remain a prominent force in the evolving political order and would retain many executive powers, a prospect hard-liners from Satsuma and Chōshū found intolerable. Events came to a head on January 3, 1868 when these elements seized the imperial palace in Kyoto, and the following day had the fifteen-year-old Emperor Meiji declare his own restoration to full power. Although the majority of the imperial consultative assembly was happy with the formal declaration of direct rule by the court and tended to support a continued collaboration with the Tokugawa (under the concept of "just government" ( 公議政体, kōgiseitai) ), Saigō Takamori threatened the assembly into abolishing the title "shogun" and ordering the confiscation of Yoshinobu's lands.
