On 22 January 1858, "Daigaku-no-kami" Hayashi Akira headed the bakufu delegation which sought advice from Emperor Kōmei in deciding how to deal with newly assertive foreign powers. This would have been the first time the Emperor's counsel was actively sought since the establishment of the Tokugawa shogunate. The most easily identified consequence of this transitional overture would be the increased numbers of messengers streaming back and forth between Edo and Kyoto during the next decade. Concerning these difficult Imperial audiences in Kyoto, there is no small irony in the fact that the shogun and his bakufu were represented by a 19th-century neo-Confucian scholar/bureaucrat who would have been somewhat surprised to find himself at a crucial nexus of managing political change—moving arguably "by the book" through uncharted waters with well-settled theories and history as the only reliable guide. Hayashi Akira was dispatched from Edo to Kyoto in October 1858 to explain the terms of the , also known as the "Harris Treaty". Hayashi's twofold task was to both explain the terms to a sceptical Emperor and gain the sovereign's assent to it. Kōmei did ultimately acquiesce in February 1859 when he came to understand that there was no alternative.