Hōjō Yoshitoki

Born in 1163 (Chōkan 1) as a son of the Izu warrior Hōjō Tokimasa (this site's id 70). His elder sister was Masako (this site's id 24), the wife of Minamoto no Yoritomo (this site's id 23).

He joined Yoritomo's uprising of 1180 while young and supported the founding process of the Kamakura shogunate. After Yoritomo's death, the substantive power of the shogunate shifted from the shōgun to the council of powerful gokenin, and the Hōjō were positioned at its center.

In 1205 (Genkyū 2), when the Maki-shi Incident arose — in which his father Tokimasa plotted with his second wife Maki-no-kata to remove Sanetomo — Yoshitoki joined with his sister Masako to bring down his father and succeeded to the office of Mandokoro Bettō (shikken).

In 1213 (Kenryaku 3), he destroyed the powerful gokenin Wada Yoshimori in the Battle of Wada, and by also holding the office of Samurai-dokoro Bettō, he grasped both powers of the Mandokoro and the Samurai-dokoro.

After the third shōgun Sanetomo was assassinated in 1219 and the Minamoto shōgun line was cut off, in 1221 (Jōkyū 3) the Retired Emperor Go-Toba issued an edict to hunt down Yoshitoki (the Jōkyū War).

Together with his sister Masako, Yoshitoki sent a great army to Kyoto, defeated the court's forces, exiled the retired emperor, and set up the Rokuhara Tandai.

This victory, in which the warrior houses subdued the imperial court by force, transformed the power structure of Japan at its root.

In the sixth month of 1224 (Gennin 1), he died suddenly in Kamakura. He was sixty-two. His son Yasutoki succeeded to the system as third shikken and completed the regency politics by enacting the Goseibai Shikimoku.

“It is not that I resent my sovereign. I turn my soldiers toward Kyoto only to protect the age of the warrior houses.”

Hōjō Yoshitoki was the effective completer of the Kamakura shogunate, who established the regency politics founded by his father Tokimasa and decided the supremacy of warrior government in the Jōkyū War.

In contrast to his father Tokimasa, who fell from power within a single generation, Yoshitoki stabilized the power of the Hōjō over the long term through a cautious rule that grasped substantive power while respecting the council of gokenin.

In the Battle of Wada of 1213 he seized both powers of the Mandokoro and the Samurai-dokoro, and in the Jōkyū War of 1221 he subdued the imperial court by force.

Through this victory, the substantive power of politics shifted clearly to the warrior houses, and Japan entered the age of full-fledged warrior government.

Yoshitoki's son Yasutoki enacted the Goseibai Shikimoku (1232), and thereafter nine generations of Hōjō regents operated the Kamakura shogunate.

Yoshitoki stands at the core of the lineage of the principal figures of the Hōjō — his father Tokimasa (this site's id 70), his sister Masako (this site's id 24), and his grandsons Tokiyori (this site's id 58) and Tokimune (this site's id 29).

Ganjōju-in in Izu is the clan temple of the Hōjō, known as a place connected to Yoshitoki.