The was a special police force created by the Tokugawa shogunate during the late Bakumatsu period to restore public order to Kyoto. In the unsettled period after to ending of the national isolation policy, the political situation in Japan became increasing chaotic. Anti-government and anti-foreign rōnin congregated on the old imperial capital of Kyoto, and many of the daimyō from the western feudal domains also established residences in Kyoto in an attempt to exert influence on the Imperial Court to pressure the shogunate towards the sonnō jōi movement ("Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians") against the foreign powers.