Kugyō


Kugyō is the collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre-Meiji eras. The kugyō was broadly divided into two groups:
As part of the Meiji reforms, a single aristocratic class, the kazoku, was created in 1869 by merging the kuge and the daimyōs. In the 1870s, the organizational structure of the court itself was also modernized.
In the period after the Second World War, the kazoku was abolished, as a part of post-war Japanese reforms. The remaining political powers of the Emperor were transferred to the constitutional government of Japan, and the responsibility for state matters concerning the Emperor and the Imperial family was consolidated entirely into the Imperial Household Agency.