Hōjō Tokimasa

Born in 1138 (Hōen 4) as the son of the local Izu warrior Hōjō Tokikata. At the time, the Hōjō house was no more than one of the small and mid-sized warrior bodies of Izu.

In 1160 (Eiryaku 1), he took on the role of monitor for Minamoto no Yoritomo (this site's id 23), who had been exiled to Izu after the Heiji Rebellion.

Around 1177, the secret marriage of Tokimasa's eldest daughter Masako (this site's id 24) and Yoritomo was concluded, and from then on Tokimasa, as Yoritomo's father-in-law, was positioned at the center of the founding process of the Kamakura shogunate.

He joined Yoritomo's uprising of August 1180, and thereafter was involved as a principal warrior in the pacification of the eastern land, the pursuit of the Taira, and the subjugation of the Ōshū Fujiwara.

After Yoritomo's death in 1199, he became the position of assisting the second shōgun Yoriie (Tokimasa's grandson). In 1203, Tokimasa removed Yoriie, raised up the third shōgun Sanetomo, and took the office of Mandokoro Bettō (the origin of the later 'shikken' office) himself, seizing the substantive power of the Kamakura shogunate.

The beginning of the Hōjō regency (shikken) politics. In 1205, together with his second wife Maki-no-kata, he plotted to raise Hiraga Tomomasa as shōgun (the Maki-shi Incident), but failed, fell from power, and retired to Izu.

He died at Hōjō in Izu Province in 1215 (Kenpō 3). He was seventy-eight. He built the foundation for the nine-generation Hōjō regency politics that followed.

“Warriors should conduct warrior government. To stand under the wind of the court nobles is the shame of the house.”

Tokimasa is one of the substantive designers of the Kamakura shogunate and an important figure in the history of Japanese warrior government.

The 1203 removal of Yoriie, raising of Sanetomo, and taking of the Mandokoro Bettō office became the origin of the 'shikken politics' that would continue for over eight hundred years thereafter — the double structure in which the shikken held real power while formally serving under the shōgun.

Tokimasa himself fell from power in the Maki-shi Incident of 1205, but the next generation Yoshitoki (Tokimasa's son) stabilized the system, and thereafter the nine-generation Hōjō shikken would operate the Kamakura shogunate.

Within the relationship with Yoritomo, the principal figures of the Hōjō — Masako, Yoshitoki, Yasutoki, Tokiyori, Tokimune (this site's id 29) — were produced.

From a small local lineage of Izu to the center of the political power of Japan — Tokimasa's life is the starting point of this leap.

Ganjōju-in in Izunokuni City, Shizuoka Prefecture, was built by Tokimasa, and Tokimasa's grave remains on its grounds.