 In keeping with the analogy, they even used the term "Emperor" in reference to the "shōguns" and their regents, e.g.in the case of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, whom missionaries called "Emperor Taico-sama" (from Taikō and the honorific "sama").After the United States Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry's Black Ships forcibly opened Japan to foreign trade, and the shogunate proved incapable of hindering the "barbarian" interlopers, the Emperor Kōmei began to assert himself politically.