The regime's collapse of the 1860s was set in motion by outside events, and, once the immediate crisis was over, immobilism was in danger of reasserting itself. In 1869 an assembly of representatives of the han, while showing opposition to the shogunate and support for the ideals of Mito and the southern tozama, by addressing itself first to peripheral issues proved an ineffective body. Constitutional change was from the outset to test the patience of those outside the circle of early political decision makers. In such a context the burning sense of injustice inherent in the inequality imposed on Japan by the treaties was an essential ingredient for maintaining consensus. Public opinion, increasingly well-defined and shaped by a press, contributed powerfully in the 1880s to defining the moods of a new Japan. The abortive efforts of the 1870s to renegotiate the treaties were followed by overt foot-dragging from the treaty nations in the 1880s. Japanese nationalism in the modern sense of the term, a very vague concept in Tokugawa times, was really born in this period.

Even before the immediate problems of the Restoration had been dealt with, the Iwakura mission, taking with it half of the important political figures of the Restoration including Ōkubo Toshimichi (1830–78), Itō and Kido went abroad for the years 1871–3 (so conscious were they of the risks inherent in so many going that they sought an undertaking from those remaining not to take major decisions).