Emperor Kōmei

Kōmei became Japan's 121st emperor in 1846, near the end of the Edo period, when the country had been sealed off from the West for 220 years. That world shattered in 1853 when Commodore Matthew C. Perry's ships forced Japan's harbors open. Kōmei despised foreign influence and resisted the Western powers, but his reign dissolved into insurrection and factional warfare as the old order buckled. He died in January 1867, and within a year the Tokugawa shogunate collapsed. His son became Emperor Meiji and presided over the transformation Kōmei had spent two decades trying to prevent.