‘Overthrow the shogunate’ (tobaku) was a popular slogan in the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate under which the opponents of the Tokugawa government were able to unite. Unity had been extremely difficult to achieve because of strong local loyalties and institutional arrangements which set the individual feudal domains against each other. Ideas like ‘honor the emperor’ (sonno) and ‘expel the barbarians’ were effective in starting to bring disparate elements together, but the idea of overthrowing the shogunate committed critics to the radical step of rebellion.