Gen'yōsha

When the Meiji Restoration happened, a lot of the samurai were rebelling against their land being taken, their rights and honor being taken, and so they themselves became reactionaries and started a counter-movement.

Most of the rebellions did fail, and many of the samurai were defeated and marginalized, but from the ruins, Toyama and other samurai formed a new organization in 1881, and they called it Genyosha, which means the Dark Ocean.

It stylized itself as a patriotic fraternity movement.

Toyama did not necessarily want to overthrow the government any longer, as he did in his earlier days.

He wanted to take control of it.

And so Genyosha pledged, uh, undying loyalty to the emperor, and the group believed that Japan had a divine mission to bring all of Asia under its sway, and woes betide anybody who got in the way of that.

The Dark Ocean name wasn't chosen at random.

It referred to the strait that separates Japan from Korea, uh, its nearest foothold in the Asian landmass.