Kōbu gattai was a policy in Bakumatsu Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 aiming at obtaining a political coordination between the Bakufu and the Imperial Court.

The policy was adopted following the murder of the Prime Minister Ii Naosuke

Ii Naosuke

was daimyo of Hikone and also Tairō of Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan, a position he held from April 23, 1858 until his death on March 24, 1860. He is most famous for signing the Harris Treaty with the United States, granting access to ports for trade to American merchants and seamen and...

 in 1860. The assassination, combined with the popular upheaval against foreign encroachment, forced the Bakufu to soften its political stance, and to adopt the compromise policy of Kōbu Gattai upon the suggestion of the Satsuma and Mito Domain

Mito Domain

was a prominent feudal domain in Japan during the Edo period. Its capital was the city of Mito, and it covered much of present-day Ibaraki Prefecture. Beginning with the appointment of Tokugawa Yorifusa by his father, Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, in 1608, the Mito branch of the Tokugawa clan...

s. In the following years, the Shogunate and the Imperial court would vie for political supremacy.