must strengthen itself to avoid being colonized by the western powers, or to suffer a similar fate as the Qing Empire. This coincided with the growing Sonnō Jōi ('expel the barbarians and revere the Emperor') movement, which attracted certain radical sections of Japan's warrior class and court nobility, and Takasugi's ideas found ready support in Chōshū and other parts of Japan. Takasugi was implicated in the 31 January 1863 attack on the British legation in Edo. Formation of the Shotai and Kiheitai Takasugi originated the revolutionary idea of auxiliary irregular militia (shotai). Under the feudal system, only the samurai class was allowed to own weapons. Takasugi promoted the recruitment of commoners into new, socially-mixed paramilitary units. In these units, neither recruitment nor promotion depended (at least in theory), on social status. Farmers, merchants, carpenters and even sumo-wrestlers and Buddhist priests were enlisted, although samurai still formed the majority in most of the Shotai. Takasugi clearly saw that utilization of the financial wealth of the middle-class merchants and farmers could increase the military strength of the domain, without weakening its finances. Since the leaders of Chōshū were unable - and unwilling - to change the social structure of the domain, limited use of peasants and commoners enabled them to form a new type of military without disturbing the traditional society. In June 1863, Takasugi himself founded a special Shotai unit under his direct command called the Kiheitai, which consisted of 300 soldiers (about half of whom were samurai). Later on, while hiding away from assassins, he encountered a shamisen-playing geisha named O-Uno (1843–1909) at a brothel Sakai-ya in Akamaseki, Shimonoseki and went into a relationship with her. External and internal crisis After Chōshū fired upon Western warships in the Straits of Shimonoseki on 25 June 1863, British, French, Dutch and American naval forces bombarded Shimonoseki, the main port of the Chōshū domain the following summer in what was later called the Bombardment of Shimonoseki. Takasugi was put in charge of the defense of Shimonoseki. An anti-Chōshū coup in Kyoto in the 18 August 1863 threatened to jeopardize Chōshū's leading role in national politics, and Chōshū was ousted by a coalition of the Satsuma and Aizu in the imperial court. Following the Kyohoji incident on 16 August which involved a conflict between the Chōshū's forces Kiheitai and Senkitai (撰鋒隊) at the Kyohoji temple which left two people dead, Hikosuke Miyagi, who was