Japan where most of the country's important ports were located. The shogunate responded in Sakoku policies of isolationism, preventing the ports of western Honshu and Kyūshū from trading with foreigners and sending Japanese vessels abroad. The decline of the Tokugawa shogunate during the Bakumatsu period from 1853 led to lessening discrimination against tozama daimyō. In November 1864, Matsumae Takahiro, the tozama daimyō of the Matsumae clan, was appointed as rōjū, one of the highest-ranking government posts in the Tokugawa government. Tozama formed the nucleus of the growing anti-Tokugawa movement, with the Satsuma and Chōshū (Shimazu and Mori clans respectively) primarily responsible for the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate in the Meiji Restoration. Rallying other tozama and even fudai to their cause in support of the Imperial Court, they fought against the shogunate, Aizu Domain, and the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei during the Boshin War of 1868 to 1869. Many people from Satsuma and Chōshū dominated politics of the Empire of Japan in the ensuing decades, and well into the 20th century, as part of the Meiji oligarchy. The distinction between tozama and fudai became obsolete when the daimyō were morphed into the new kazoku aristocracy. References Ooms, Herman (1975). Charismatic Bureaucrat. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Daimyo Japanese historical terms Edo period