孝明天皇
Tenno Komei was born in 1831. He was the fourth son of Emperor Ninko and Empress Masako Fujiwara. Komei's Imperial family lived with him in the Dairi of the Heian Palace. The family included six children, four daughters and two sons, but the future Emperor Meiji was the only one to survive childhood.
Osahito-shinno became emperor following the death of his emperor-father. The succession (the senso) was considered to have been received by the new monarch; and shortly thereafter, Emperor Kōmei is said to have acceded (the sokui). The events during his lifetime shed some light on his reign. The years of Kōmei's reign correspond with a period in which Tokugawa Ieyoshi, Tokugawa Iesada, Tokugawa Iemochi, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu were leaders at the pinnacle of the Tokugawa shogunate.
With the arrival of US Commodore Matthew Perry and his "Black Ships" on 8 July 1853, Japan began its transformation into a modern industrial power. The Tokugawa shogunate, which had controlled military and civil affairs in Japan's feudal provinces for some three centuries, proved unable to meet the new challenge of open trade with the West.
At the time, Emperor Komei still retained only symbolic power at his court in Kyoto. As the shogunate, divided by internal disputes, gradually surrendered sovereignty to the foreign powers, under threat of military force, Emperor Komei began to assert himself and regain many of the powers his ancestors had conceded to the Tokugawa clan at the close of the Sengoku ("warring states") period.
The Emperor's younger sister was married to the Tokugawa shogun Tokugawa Iemochi as part of the Movement to Unite Court and Bakufu.Both the Emperor and his sister were against the marriage, even though he realized the gains to be had from such familial connections with the true ruler of Japan. Emperor Komei did not care much for anything foreign, and he opposed opening Japan to Western powers, even as the shogun continued to accept foreign demands.
The pilgrimage of the 14th shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to Kyoto in 1863 was a defining moment not only in 19th century relations between the military bakufu and the Imperial Court, but also in what history would come to call the Meiji Restoration. The reception by Emperor Komei of the shogun in the Kyoto palace can be seen as a moment at which the political realm was thoroughly redefined, becoming a transitional imperial realm. This impression was enforced by the ensuing pilgrimage by Emperor Komei to the Kamo shrine, with the shogun in tow. This public demonstration showed that a new order had now emerged in the realm.
After reluctantly accepting the Harris Treaty, Japan quickly signed similar treaties, called the Ansei Treaties, with Russia, France, Great Britain, and the Netherlands. These Treaties were widely regarded by Japanese intellectuals as unequal, having been forced on Japan through gunboat diplomacy, and as a sign of the West's desire to incorporate Japan into the imperialism that had been taking hold of the continent. Among other measures, they gave the Western nations unequivocal control of tariffs on imports and the right of extraterritoriality to all their visiting nationals. They would remain a sticking point in Japan's relations with the West up to the turn of the 20th century.
In January 1867 the emperor was diagnosed with smallpox. This caused surprise because it was said that Komei had never been ill before. On 30 January 1867 he suffered a fatally violent bout of vomiting and diarrhea. He had purple spots on his face. Since Komei had consistently opposed the anti-bakufu forces this was distinctly convenient for them and it was rumored that he was assassinated, either by radicals from Choshu or radical officials in the court.
British diplomat Sir Ernest Satow wrote, "It is impossible to deny that [the Emperor Kōmei's] disappearance from the political scene, leaving as his successor a boy of fifteen or sixteen [actually fourteen], was most opportune". However, there is no evidence of this and it is generally believed that he was simply one more victim of what was a worldwide pandemic at the time.
After Komei's death in 1867, his kami was enshrined in the Imperial mausoleum, Nochi no Tsukinowa no Higashi no misasagi, which is at Sennyu-ji in Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto.
