Emperor Go-Daigo
Go-Daigo was the Japanese emperor who destroyed the Kamakura shogunate and then lost the country trying to rule it himself. Born in 1288, he acceded in 1318 at thirty, unusually old for an emperor in a period when abdication in favour of a child was normal and real power lay with retired emperors and with the Hōjō regents in Kamakura. He refused the arrangement. He governed personally rather than abdicating, and set out to restore direct imperial rule as it had existed centuries earlier. Two conspiracies against the shogunate were discovered, in 1324 and 1331. After the second he fled the capital with the imperial regalia, was captured, and was exiled to the Oki Islands in 1332. He escaped in 1333, and the revolt spread. Kusunoki Masashige held out against far larger forces with unconventional tactics, Ashikaga Takauji defected to the imperial side and took Kyoto, and Nitta Yoshisada destroyed Kamakura. The Hōjō regent and hundreds of his followers killed themselves. The Kenmu Restoration that followed lasted about three years and failed comprehensively. Go-Daigo rewarded court aristocrats and temples, confirmed land claims arbitrarily and slowly, taxed the provinces to build a new palace, and gave the warriors who had won his war very little. He refused Takauji the shogunate. Takauji revolted in 1335, defeated the loyalists at Minatogawa in 1336, and installed a rival emperor. Go-Daigo escaped to Yoshino in the mountains south of Nara with what he claimed were the true regalia, and established the Southern Court. The schism lasted until 1392. He died at Yoshino in 1339.
- Lived: 1288 CE – 1339 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: emperor
