FIELD REPORTS
The Hōji Battle: How Tokiyori Destroyed the Miura Clan
On June 5, 1247, at Kamakura. The clan of the powerful gokenin Miura Yasumura was surprised by Tokiyori, holed up in the Hōkke-dō, and five hundred took their own lives. Tracing the single day in which the twenty-one-year-old shikken completed the concentration of Hōjō power.
On June 5, 1247 (the fifth of the sixth month of Hōji 1), at Kamakura. Hōjō Tokiyori was only a year into his shikken appointment — twenty-one.
On this day, Tokiyori surprised the clan of the foremost gokenin Miura Yasumura, and destroyed it in a single day.
The moment in which the Miura clan, of hundreds of years' standing, disappeared from the center of the Kamakura shogunate.
The Position of the Miura
The Miura were a powerful gokenin house that had borne the core of shogunal government since the formation of the Kamakura shogunate from the raising of troops by Minamoto no Yoritomo.
Miura Yasumura, like Tokiyori, was a central figure of the shogunal Council of State, and also had ties by marriage (Tokiyori's wife was Yasumura's niece).
But amid the advance of the concentration of Hōjō power, the existence of the Miura as a powerful gokenin had become a potential obstacle to the completion of tokusō politics.
The Course of the Battle
In the early dawn of June 5, 1247, Tokiyori combined provocation and surprise to encircle the Miura residence.
About five hundred of the Yasumura clan and their kin holed up in the Hōkke-dō (the Yoritomo mausoleum, in the modern Nikaidō, Kamakura City).
Under Tokiyori's attack and encirclement, Yasumura and his clan took their own lives together before Yoritomo's grave.
The battle was decided the same day.
The Completion of Tokusō Politics
As a result of the Hōji Battle, the resistance force of the powerful gokenin in the Kamakura shogunate effectively disappeared.
The structure in which the Hōjō tokusō house (main line) with Tokiyori at its apex monopolized real power in the shogunal government — the system later called 'tokusō politics' — was completed.
From then on, the governance of the Kamakura shogunate was operated centered on the tokusō, and this structure became the foundation for the response of the next generation's Tokimune (this site's id 29) to the Mongol invasions.
The destruction of the Miura clan was an event that fundamentally transformed the power structure of the Kamakura shogunate.
"Miura Yasumura and those following him take their own lives before Yoritomo's mausoleum."
PRIMARY SOURCES & ARCHIVES
- PRIMARY
Azuma Kagami
Compiled by the Kamakura shogunate
Records the course of the Hōji Battle chronologically
- SCHOLARSHIP
Hōjō Tokiyori
Takahashi Shin'ichirō / Yoshikawa Kōbunkan (Jinbutsu Sōsho)
Empirical examination of the political structure of the Hōji Battle
- ARCHIVE
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