The Maki-shi Incident: In 1205, Tokimasa Fell From the Peak of Power

On the nineteenth of the leap seventh month of 1205 (Genkyū 2), at Kamakura. Hōjō Tokimasa was suddenly forced into retirement from Kamakura to Hōjō in Izu Province.

Tokimasa, who until the day before had been Mandokoro Bettō and the highest executive of the Kamakura shogunate, fell from the peak of power in a single day.

It was a fall caused by the counter-attack led by his daughter Masako and son Yoshitoki — a coup later called the 'Maki-shi Incident.

' He was sixty-seven; he would spend the ten years thereafter in Izu.

Tokimasa, after the death of his first wife the Itō (mother of Masako and Yoshitoki), took as second wife Maki-no-kata.

Maki-no-kata was said to be from Kyoto, and had strong influence on Tokimasa's political judgment.

Between Tokimasa and Maki-no-kata, daughters were born; one of them became the wife of the shogunate's powerful gokenin Hiraga Tomomasa (of the Seiwa Genji).

Maki-no-kata harbored the ambition of making her own son-in-law Tomomasa shōgun.

In the leap seventh month of 1205, Tokimasa and Maki-no-kata are said to have planned the assassination of the third shōgun Sanetomo and the raising up of Hiraga Tomomasa as shōgun.

But this plan reached the ears of Masako and Yoshitoki in advance. Masako, who was Sanetomo's real mother, flew into rage at her father Tokimasa's involvement in her son's assassination plan.

Yoshitoki took action to forcibly remove his father from Kamakura. Through the coordination of Masako and Yoshitoki, Sanetomo was protected, and Tokimasa was ordered under confinement to retire to Izu.

Maki-no-kata also fell from power at the same time, and Tomomasa was killed in Kyoto.

Tokimasa spent the next ten years at Hōjō in Izu Province. Now retired, Tokimasa was completely cut off from shogunate politics.

The subsequent shogunate was led by Yoshitoki as the second shikken, and would defeat the court in the Jōkyū War (1221) to establish shogunal authority.

Ironically, the 'shikken politics' institution Tokimasa had founded took hold in earnest only after the founder himself had fallen.

On January 6, 1215 (Kenpō 3), Tokimasa died at Hōjō in Izu Province. He was seventy-eight.

He was buried at Ganjōju-in in Izu. The moment when his daughter Masako's political maturation reached the point of overthrowing her father Tokimasa shows the process by which the power structure of the Kamakura shogunate was further refined within the Hōjō house.