The Jōkyū War: The Day Yoshitoki Subdued the Imperial Court by Force, 1221

In the fifth month of 1221 (Jōkyū 3), in Kyoto. The Retired Emperor Go-Toba issued a nationwide edict ordering the hunting-down of the Kamakura shogunate's shikken Hōjō Yoshitoki.

Backed by the authority of the imperial house, it was an uprising that sought to rally forces dissatisfied with the shogunate.

When the report reached Kamakura, the gokenin were shaken. As the fear of becoming enemies of the court shook the shogunate, Yoshitoki, together with his sister Masako (this site's id 24), made the unprecedented decision to turn his soldiers squarely against the imperial court.

Before the shaken gokenin, his sister Masako appealed for unity, the 'Azuma Kagami' transmits.

Masako's words, expounding the debt of gratitude since Yoritomo's day and pressing them to choose whether to side with the retired emperor or to defend the shogunate, are said to have made the hearts of the gokenin one.

Backed by this unity, Yoshitoki decided without hesitation to march on Kyoto. Were he to take the defensive, the shogunate would be swallowed by the court's authority.

To settle matters at a stroke through the offensive was Yoshitoki's strategy.

With his son Yasutoki and his brother Tokifusa as commanders, Yoshitoki sent a great army toward Kyoto by the three roads of Tōkai, Tōsan, and Hokuriku.

The shogunate's army defeated the court's forces in place after place and subdued Kyoto in only about a month.

The court side's resistance was brittle, and the retired emperor's uprising collapsed with military ease.

The organized mobilizing power of the warrior houses overwhelmed the ragtag army that relied on the court's authority.

After the war, the shogunate exiled Go-Toba to Oki and the other two retired emperors as well, and intervened even in the imperial succession.

It placed the court under surveillance by setting up the Rokuhara Tandai in Kyoto.

This event, in which the imperial house yielded to the warrior houses by force, transformed the power structure of Japan at its root.

Thereafter the substantive power of politics shifted clearly to the warrior side.

Yoshitoki's personal decision of 1221 decided the supremacy of warrior government that would continue for more than six centuries.

In 1224, Yoshitoki died suddenly. He was sixty-two.