Now that the Boshin War was over, the Meiji Emperor could finally settle into the bloodless revolution and start modernizing Japan. Well... Maybe not so bloodless. It turns out that once in charge, the Emperor believed that the best way forward for the country was to embrace western ideas and begin growing in that direction: the exact opposite position of the factions who fought on his behalf during the Boshin War. And one of those factions was the samurai warrior class who had no place in the society Japan was forming.