Japan. Various
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sagacity that they had been induced to enter the service of the military government at Kamakura. By this department the administration of civil affairs was chiefly conducted, as was the administration of military affairs by the staff department (samurai-dokoro). A department of justice (monchū-jo) was also organized with Miyoshi Yasunobu, another civilian, at its head, its functions being the hearing of all civil suits, and the management of matters relating to civil law.
Thenceforward down to the days of the Ashikaga, the descendants of the three statesmen from Kyōto continued to direct the administration of affairs at Kamakura. By 1184, the organization of Yoritomo's central government (bakufu) was complete, but the local administration had still to be elaborated. Advantage was taken of the general disorder that still existed throughout the land, owing to the disturbance caused by the remnants of the Taira party and by the followers of Yukiiye and Yoshitsune. On the advice of Ōye Hiromoto, Yoritomo made such strong representations to the ex-emperor that the latter sanctioned the appointment of high constables (shugo) in the various provinces and superintendents (jitō) of the great estates, the whole being under the control of the shōgun himself. By the energy of these officials numbers of the insurgents were arrested in different localities, and order was everywhere restored. Furthermore, an edict was issued requiring that all cultivators of land throughout the empire should without distinction contribute to the military exchequer a tax at the rate of five shō (.256 bushels) of grain per tan (one-fourth of an acre). Thenceforth the power of the former provincial governors and headmen gradually declined, and the authority of the newly appointed high constables and superintendents increased proportionally. The shōgun, of course, took care that the occupants of the new offices should be chosen from among his own relatives and partisans, so that his sway was eventually consolidated everywhere, and the control of the empire virtually passed into his hands.
Yoritomo died in 1200 at the age of fifty-three, his eldest son, Yoriiye, succeeding to the title of generalissimo. But Yoriiye being only eighteen years of age, and having given no evidence of ability, his mother, Masako, commissioned her own father Hōjō Tokimasa, together with twelve councilors, to assume the direction of the government at Kamakura. From this time began the dark age of Kamakura, in which unbridled ambition ignored all restraints of propriety. When the young Yoriiye fell ill in 1203, his mother, acting in concert with Tokimasa, planned to relieve him of his office of generalissimo, and to appoint his son Ichihata to be lord and governor general of the twenty-eight eastern provinces forming Kwantō, and his young brother Chihata—afterward called Sanetomo—to be lord of the thirty-eight western provinces forming Kwansei. This plot so incensed Yoriiye that the latter, with his wife's father, Hiki Yoshikazu, planned means to exterminate the Hōjō family. Tokimasa frustrated the design by having Yoshikazu assassinated, and then attacking and slaying all his blood relations together with Ichihata. Yoriiye he afterward shut up in a temple, and ultimately caused him to be put to death. Sanetomo, Yoriiye's younger brother, succeeded him, but exercised no administrative authority, the Hōjō holding everything in their own grasp. The shōgun consequently devoted himself to literature rather than to military exercises. Moreover, foreseeing that fortune would not long continue to smile upon the Minamoto family, he thought to obtain a high position in the central government, and add luster to the family's renown while there was yet time. Hence he was promoted to the post of chief councilor of state (dainagon), in conjunction with that of commander in chief of the guards of the left, his official rank being raised to the first of the second class. Shortly afterward he became lord keeper of the privy seal and then minister of the right. But in 1219, on the occasion of worshiping at a shrine in Kamakura, he was stabbed to death by Kugyō, a son of Yoriiye. This event terminated the descendants of the Minamoto family in the direct line. A brief interval of thirty-five years, or three generations,[2] from the time when Yoritomo had risen to the head of the government, sufficed to complete the supremacy of the great clan, the first shōgun of which had so systematically pruned off the useful members of its own branch.
The Minamoto were followed by the Hōjō as feudal rulers. The Hōjō family was of Taira origin, its founder being Taira-no-Sadamori. The name Hōjō was derived from the fact that the family's headquarters were at Hōjō in Izu. During the period of Yoritomo's exile in Izu, he experienced generous and hospitable treatment at the hands of Hōjō Tokimasa, whose daughter he married. All during Yoritomo's campaigns and subsequent administration at Kamakura, Tokimasa, though of the Taira family, proved a loyal and indispensable counselor. Under Yoriije, being the grandfather on the mother's side, he naturally enjoyed the widest popularity and wielded the greatest power of all the military nobles of the time. As has been seen, the Hōjō did not even hesitate to assassinate the shōgun in order to further their personal interests. Tokimasa allowed himself to be controlled by the counsels of his wife. At her slanderous instance he brought about the overthrow of a great territorial noble, Hatakeyama, and by her advice he conceived the project of elevating to the shōgunate his younger daughter's husband, Hiraga Tomomasa. The third shōgun, Sanetomo, then a mere youth, was an inmate of Tokimasa's house at the time of this plot. His mother, Masako, learning what was on foot, caused him to be removed to the house of her brother Yoshitoki, with the assistance of the military vassals of the Minamoto, and succeeded not only in having Tokimasa and his intriguing wife sent back to Hōjō, but also in compassing the death of Tomomasa in Kyōto. These events transferred the territorial and military ascendancy among the Kamakura nobility to the Wada family, whom therefore Yoshitoki, the Hōjō chief in Kamakura, formed the design of destroying. In pursuance of that scheme, he prompted Kugyō to assassinate Sanetomo, the last of the Minamoto family. Then Fujiwara-no-Yoritsune, a relative of Yoritomo, was summoned from Kyōto to assume the nominal office of shōgun, Masako, the widow of Yoritomo, exercising the controlling power and Yoshitoki holding the office of regent (shikken, an office virtually corresponding with the sesshō of the central government); in which capacity he administered all the affairs of the bakufu in the name of the young shōgun. Yoshitoki was thus a shōgun with the name of a shikken.
It was about this time that the civil government of Kyōto rose under the leadership of the ex-Emperor Gotoba in an attempt to overthrow the feudal administration. Ever since the time of Yoritomo, Gotoba had cherished the hope of recovering the control of administrative affairs, and with that object had stationed military men of his own choosing in the west, in addition to those already stationed in the north, conferring on their leaders swords forged by his own hands, and otherwise sparing no pains to organize a strong military following. So long, however, as Yoritomo lived, Gotoba's designs could not be realized. But when Sanetomo, the third shōgun of Yoritomo's line, fell under the sword of Kugyō, the ex-emperor thought that he descried an opportunity to attain his purpose. But Hōjō Yoshitoki set up a Fujiwara as a nominal shōgun, and himself exercised the administrative authority in a markedly arrogant and arbitrary manner. Gotoba then selected a vassal of Kamakura, without consulting the Hōjō, as warden of the western marches, and allowed him to reside in Kyōto. Yoshitoki forthwith confiscated all the lands belonging to the warden. Thereupon an imperial mandate was issued, directing that the estates should be restored, to which Yoshitoki paid no attention. A further instance of contumacy occurred in connection with an estate which the ex-emperor had conferred on one of his favorite mistresses.
Stung by these insults, Gotoba finally resolved to overthrow the Kamakura government. In this design he was strongly supported by another ex-emperor, Juntoku, who had just abdicated in favor of his son, Chūkyō. The third of the three ex-emperors of the time, Tsuchimikado, opposed the project of the other two, urging that its execution was still premature. Gotoba could count upon the support of seventeen hundred warriors, so in 1221 an imperial mandate circulated through all the provinces of the empire ordering the destruction of the Hōjō family. It was specially addressed to the powerful lord, Miura Yoshimura. But, instead of obeying, he conveyed secret information of the fact to Yoshitoki, who in turn informed Masako, the widow of Yoritomo. She thereupon summoned all the military leaders of the surrounding provinces, and having reminded them of the possessions and ranks bestowed by the Minamoto chief on the samurai of Kwantō, said that an occasion had now arisen to repay her deceased husband's favors. The result was that none of these captains espoused the sovereign's cause in the struggle that ensued. Meanwhile, Yoshitoki took counsel of his generals as to a plan of campaign, and finally adopted the proposal of Ōye Hiromoto that the bulk