the tradition of the clan's New Year's meeting. Every year during the meeting, the elders and the administrators would ask the daimyo whether the time to overthrow the shogunate had come, to which the daimyo would reply: "Not yet, the shogunate is still too powerful." This dream would eventually be realized some 260 years later, when the domain joined forces with the Satsuma Domain and sympathetic court nobles to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. In 1865, the domain bought a war-ship Union (ja) from Glover and Co., an agency of Jardine Matheson established in Nagasaki, in the name of Satsuma Domain. They led the fight against the armies of the former shōgun, which included the Ōuetsu Reppan Dōmei, Aizu, and the Ezo Republic, during the Boshin War. The domains' military forces of 1867 through 1869 also formed the foundation for the Imperial Japanese Army. Thanks to this alliance, Chōshū and Satsuma natives enjoyed political and societal prominence well into the Meiji and even Taishō eras. Economics The initial reduction of 1.2 million to 369,000 koku resulted in a large shortfall in terms of military upkeep and infrastructure maintenance, despite which the domain remained the seventh-largest in Japan outside the shogunate-controlled domains. In order to bring the domain's finances out of debt, strict policies were enforced on the retainers: All retainers' fiefs were drastically reduced. Some retainers who were paid in land began to be paid in rice. Some retainers were laid off and encouraged to engage in agriculture. Previously, as a result of high taxation, farmers secretly developed farms far inside the mountains as a private food source. A new land survey was conducted within the domain in which many hidden farms were discovered and taxed. The domain also began a strict policy with regard to trade. Laws were also passed through which the profitable trade of the "four whites" was controlled by the domain: paper, rice, salt, and wax. Some of the profits, and a large amount of the tax revenue from this trade, went into the domain coffers. These policies greatly strengthened the domain's finances and allowed the daimyo more effective control over his territory. However, these policies angered peasants and displaced samurai alike, resulting in frequent revolts. Politics The capital of the domain was the castle town of Hagi, which was the source of Chōshū's alternate name of Hagi han (萩藩). The domain remained under the rule of