So the Tokugawa didn't give up without a fight, but the civil war between the stronger daimyo and the Bokufu eventually led to the end of the shogunate. And in 1868, the rebels got the newly enthroned Emperor Meiji to abolish the Bokufu and proclaim a restoration of the imperial throne. Now the emperor didn't have much real power, but he became a symbolic figure, a representative of a mythical past around whom modernizers could build a sense of national pride. And in place of Bokufu, Japan created one of the most modern nation-states in the world. After some trial and error, the Meiji leaders created a European-style cabinet system of government with a prime minister, and in 1889 promulgated a constitution that even contained a deliberative assembly, the Diet, although the cabinet ministers weren't responsible to it. The Japanese were incorporated into this system as bureaucrats, and their stipends were gradually taken away, and soon the Japanese government developed into, like, something of a meritocracy. Japan also created a new conscript army.