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During most of the tumultuous years from the arrival of Commodore Perry in Japan in 1853 to the complete defeat of the last forces of the Shogunate in 1869, one man could be trusted to support all the wrong policies. This was the Emperor Osahito, posthumously named Kōmei, who supported the continuation of the Shogunate, did not wish to alter Japanese society, disliked Chōshū which he blamed for bringing violence to the city of Kyoto in 1864, and seems to have felt that the presence of foreigners in Japan was a form of pollution. Readers of history will not be surprised to learn that the imperial line was rewarded by the restoration of imperial rule after the victory of the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance. However, the restoration was under Kōmei's son Mutsuhito, the Meiji Emperor.

Kōmei died on 30th January 1867 at the age of 35 and was succeed by his 14 year old son. The political situation in Japan was that the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance or Satchō Alliance had been formed in 1866 in secret and about 7,000 rifles supplied to Chōshū. During the second half of 1866, the Shogunal forces invading Chōshū had been decisively defeated and had been forced to make a truce. Meanwhile, the Shogun Iemochi had died in August 1866 and Yoshinobu had become the last Shogun in early January 1867 with Kōmei's support.

The first alternative history question is what would have happened if Kōmei had survived? It is hard to imagine that such a neat restoration of imperial rule by the Satchō Alliance would have been possible. Thus Kōmei's death was very convenient for Japan.

Indeed it was so convenient that some histories such as Donald Calman's “The Nature and Origins of Japanese Imperialism” (1992) pages 90-3 assert that he was poisoned and apparently the British diplomat Ernest Satow also believed this. However, other historians such as Totman or Ravina have accepted that Kōmei died of smallpox as his symptoms are clearly consistent with smallpox. Calman's position follows naturally from his highly cynical view that Western historians have often wrongly accepted “primary sources” created specifically to mislead and he would no doubt argue that the symptoms were written down solely to establish that the Emperor's death was natural. Others have pointed out that Kōmei was not known to have been in contact with anyone with smallpox and have suggested that a handkerchief could have been taken from a sufferer and deliberately given to Kōmei.

This gives us two further possibilities: what would have happened if a plot to kill Kōmei had been discovered or alternatively if the plot had been revealed after it had succeeded? Of course, those possibilities involve us knowing who might have conducted such a plot. Clearly the Shogunate would have been stupid to remove a supporter but he was an inconvenient supporter who might have protested against the further opening of Japan to foreigners. The Satchō Alliance would benefit from Kōmei's removal and over 40 years later An Jung-geun, a Korean nationalist born 12 years after Kōmei's death, would list the murder as one of the crimes of Ito Hirobumi, which proves nothing beyond the persistence of gossip. The other possibility would be the court nobles of Kyoto, who may have believed that they would rule Japan after an Imperial Restoration and probably had less reverence for the Emperor than anyone else.

Finally, it is interesting to speculate on what Hirohito believed was the cause of his great-grandfather's death. If he believed that he had been killed, it throws some light on his hesitancy in opposing the New Order of the 1930s.
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