The Meiji oligarchy, as the new ruling class will become known to historians, is a privileged clique that exercises imperial power, sometimes despotically.

The members of this class are adherents to kokugaku and believe they are the creators of a new order as grand as that established by Japan's original founders.

Two of the major figures of this group are Okubo Toshimichi (1832-78), son of a Satsuma retainer, and Satsuma samurai Saigo Takamori (1827-77), who had joined forces with Choshu, Tosa, and Hizen to overthrow the Tokugawa.

Okubo becomes minister of finance and Saigo a field marshal; both are imperial councilors.

Kido Koin (1833-77), native of Choshu, student of Yoshida Shoin, and coconspirator with Okubo and Saigo, becomes minister of education and chairman of the Governors' Conference and pushes for constitutional government.

Also prominent were Iwakura Tomomi (1825-83), a Kyoto native who had opposed the Tokugawa and is to become the first ambassador to the United States, and Okuma Shigenobu (1838-1922), of Hizen, a student of Rangaku, Chinese, and English, who will hold various ministerial portfolios, eventually becoming prime minister in 1898.