1185–1333
Kamakura
The Kamakura shogunate (1185-1333) — Japan's first warrior-led government, the Mongol invasions, and the rise of the Hōjō.
-- 2 SUBJECTS ON FILE
SUBJECTS IN THIS ERA
REPORTS FROM THIS ERA
The Divine Wind: Why Hōjō Tokimune Could Not Pay His Soldiers After Defeating the Mongols
In 1274 and again in 1281, Hōjō Tokimune defended Japan against the largest seaborne invasion forces of the pre-modern world. The defenses worked. The typhoons came. Japan survived. The bakufu was broken anyway, because there were no spoils to give the warriors who had won.
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.
The Founding of Kenchō-ji: The Zen Tokiyori Planted in Kamakura
In 1253, Tokiyori opened Japan's first full-fledged Zen temple, Kenchō-ji, in Kamakura. Tracing the beginning of a temple with Rankei Dōryū of Song China as founding abbot, which would become the center of Japanese Zen from then on.
Hachi-no-ki: How the Tokiyori Provincial Circuit Legend Was Born
The Muromachi nō play 'Hachi-no-ki' transmits that Tokiyori in the guise of a traveling monk sought a night's lodging at Sano Tsuneyo's house in Sano in Kōzuke, and that Tsuneyo burned his prized potted trees as firewood. Tracing the relation between historical fact and legend, and why the ideal of 'a ruler who sees the people' was projected onto Tokiyori.