Episode 3 of 6

Yoshinobu's Rejection

When: 17 January 1868
Where: Osaka Castle (Yoshinobu's base); declaration addressed to the court in Kyoto
Part of: Meiji Restoration declared and the Boshin War opens in Japan

Tokugawa Yoshinobu declared he would not be bound by the restoration proclamation, and on 24 January decided to prepare an attack on Kyoto.

Although Yoshinobu initially agreed to the court's demands, on 17 January 1868 he declared that he would not be bound by the proclamation of the restoration and called on the court to rescind it. On 24 January, after considerable provocation by Satsuma's rōnin in Edo, Yoshinobu, from his base at Osaka Castle, decided to prepare an attack on Kyoto, ostensibly to dislodge the Satsuma and Chōshū elements dominating the court and free the young Emperor Meiji from their influence.

Sources

Battle of Toba–Fushimi Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-22
Boshin War Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-21

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.