The Kamakura Shogunate
Minamoto no Yoritomo destroyed the Taira at Dan-no-ura in April 1185 and built a military government at Kamakura that governed Japan for a century and a half. The Genpei War had run five years between the Taira and Minamoto clans, both of provincial warrior stock that had grown powerful serving a court in Kyoto that had stopped being able to govern the provinces. Dan-no-ura was fought in the straits of Shimonoseki and turned on the tide. The Taira had the advantage in the morning and lost it when the current reversed; the child emperor Antoku, aged six, was drowned by his grandmother, who jumped with him rather than be taken, and the imperial sword went down with them and was never recovered. Yoritomo's achievement was what he did next. Rather than move to Kyoto and be absorbed by the court, he stayed at Kamakura, 400 kilometres east, and had the emperor grant him the right to appoint military governors in every province and stewards on every estate — which put his men on the ground everywhere that mattered while the court kept its ceremonies and its titles. He was made shogun in 1192. The result was a dual system that lasted almost seven centuries: an emperor who reigned and a military government that ruled. His own line lasted two generations. His widow's family, the Hōjō, took the regency and ran the shogunate as regents for shoguns who were themselves figureheads. Kamakura fell in 1333. It survived two Mongol invasions in 1274 and 1281, and was ruined by the cost of rewarding warriors for a defensive war that produced no land to give them.
- Year: 1185 CE
- Category: Political
