Unified isn't really the right word you're looking for. Modern, perhaps? Open? Centralized? I lean most towards the last one, but it's certainly not exclusive to the imperial court, but it's definitely probably one of the defining achievements of the Meiji Restoration.
With regards to the OP; you actually have political currents during the Shogunate running towards the reverence of the Emperor. Towards the end of the Shogunate (but long before the opening up), the development of Japanese political philosophy was in a marked trend that was beginning to move away from the dominant Sino-centric world-view, emphasizing emulation of meritocratic China, towards a Japan-centric model, one which glorified the purity of the Imperial line, and by extension, Japan; and a large part of that was derived from the perceived divinity of the Emperor, and the (actually fairly accurate) claim that his was the longest-reigning unbroken dynasty in the world (with certain allowances made), the concentration of which on was by the early 19th century gaining much traction among educated Japanese. The ideas behind the Restoration of the Emperor did not simply pull themselves out of thin air, after all.