Kamakura: A Contemplative Guide

By Burritt Sabin

Kamakura rose as the first samurai capital in the 12th century. Shogun Yoritomo chose for the seat of his military government a natural fortress far from the intrigues of the court in Kyoto. He summoned from the capital carpenters to build grand temples and sculptors to carve images for their halls. His successors, the Hj, built the great Zen monasteries Kench-ji and Engaku-ji. Religious figures including Nichiren, Ippen, and Ninsh established temples of their respective Buddhist sects in the new city. Kamakura: A Contemplative Guide introduces the dramatic and often violent lives of these figures and walks you through shrine and temple precincts, illuminating the features of their halls, gardens, and statuary. It takes you over the passes cut sheer through rock to give entrance to the city. It shows Kamakura through the eyes of the writers and artists drawn to the seaside city by its laid-back pace, rich history, and abundant greenery. Rare photographs complement the text. Lucid maps pinpoint places of interest. Finally, Kamakura: A Contemplative Guide explains how the establishment of the first samurai capital, from whence the ethic and spirit of the Eastern warrior spread nationwide, was of significance in the formation of Japan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Aug 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781543764321

Burritt Sabin

Burritt Sabin first came to Japan as a naval officer in 1975 and has lived there ever since. He later embarked on a career in journalism, writing columns for the Asahi Shimbun and Japan Times. He is the author of A Historical Guide to Yokohama: Sketches of the Twice-Risen Phoenix.

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Copyright © 2021 by Burritt Sabin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Portions of chapters 3, 5, and 7 in Part 2 appeared in slightly different versions in the Japan Times, which generously granted permission to reprint here.

Maps created by Higashiyama Shinzo.

Cover art: Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, a woodcut by Kawase Hasui; collection of author.

Calligraphy: Drawn by Hirai Toki.

www.partridgepublishing.com/singapore

For Old

Bert D.

The Kanto eight provinces are the equal of all Japan;

and Kamakura is the equal of the Kanto eight provinces.

—An old saying.

CONTENTS

Preface

PART ONE: FIRST SAMURAI CAPITAL

Chapter 1 To Kamakura Castle

Chapter 2 The Hōjō Regency

Chapter 3 Medieval Impressions

Chapter 4 The Saints

Chapter 5 The Mongol Invasions

Chapter 6 The Fall of Kamakura

Chapter 7 Gardens

Chapter 8 Sightseers

Chapter 9 Legacy

PART TWO: GUIDE

CENTRAL KAMAKURA

Tsurugaoka Hachimangū 鶴岡八幡宮

Wakamiya Ōji 若宮大路

Kamakura Museum of National Treasures 鎌倉国宝館

Hōkai-ji 宝戒寺

Kamakura City Kawakita Film Museum 鎌倉市川喜多映画記念館

Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum 鏑木清方記念美術館

EAST

Tomb of Minamoto No Yoritomo 源頼朝の墓

Site of the Hōkedō of Hōjō Yoshitoki 北条義時法華堂跡

Egara Tenjinsha 荏柄天神社

Kamakuragū 鎌倉宮

Site of Yōfuku-ji 永福寺跡

Kakuon-ji 覚園寺

Zuisen-ji 瑞泉寺

Sugimoto-dera 杉本寺

Jōmyō-ji 浄妙寺

Hōkoku-ji 報国寺

Kōsoku-ji 光触寺

KANAZAWA

Shōmyō-ji 称名寺

Kanazawa Bunko 金沢文庫

Asahina Kiridōshi 朝比奈切通し

SOUTHEAST

Myōhō-ji 妙法寺

Ankokuron-ji 安国論寺

Chōshō-ji 長勝寺

Myōhon-ji 妙本寺

Site Where Nichiren Preached 日蓮辻説法跡

Anyōin 安養院

Moto-Hachiman (Yui Wakamiya) 元八幡 (由比若宮)

Kōmyō-ji 光明寺

Wakaenoshima 和賀江島

Nagoe Kiridōshi 名越切通し

SOUTHWEST

Hasedera 長谷寺

Kōsoku-ji 光則寺

Kamakura Museum of Literature 鎌倉文学館

Yoshiya Nobuko Memorial Museum 吉屋信子記念館

Daibutsu Kiridōshi 大仏切通し

Kōtoku-in 高徳院

Gokuraku-ji 極楽寺

Inamuragasaki 稲村ヶ崎

WEST

Jufuku-ji 寿福寺

Eishō-ji 英勝寺

Jōkōmyō-ji 浄光明寺

Kaizō-ji 海蔵寺

NORTH

Ten’en Hiking Trail 天園ハイキング・コース

Kita-Kamakura 北鎌倉

Kenchō-ji 建長寺

En’nō-ji 円応寺

Chōju-ji 長寿寺

Jōchi-ji 浄智寺

Kuzuharagaoka-Daibutsu Hiking Trail 葛原ヶ岡・大仏ハイキング・コース

Meigetsu-in 明月院

Engaku-ji 円覚寺

Tōkei-ji 東慶寺

Notes

Glossary

Preface

Kamakura is a walkable city. Except for Zuisen-ji, the temples of Yukinoshita and Nikaidō, Ōgigayatsu and Matsubagayatsu are within half an hour on foot. That stretches conventional measurement of walking distance, but ambulation complements the spiritual aspect of a shrine or temple visit. Pilgrims walk. Buses from Kamakura Station offer an alternative to shank’s mare, while Gokuraku-ji and the sights of Hase are accessible by the Enoden, a streetcar that nearly brushes against backyards until emerging at Shichirigahama on the glistening waters of Sagami Bay.

Walking is the best way to savor the pleasures of Kamakura’s ramiform network of lanes that pass by hedgerows of red robin, ubame oak, and coral shrub or between all varieties of bamboo fence—four eyes and musket barrels, raincoats and bamboo ears, Kennin-ji-gaki* and Daitoku-ji-gaki,* the two last named for Kyoto temples.

Step into a lane in Kamakura, they say, and witness a complete change of scenery. A break in a row of houses may reveal the head of a trail melting into the hills. An interstice between walls on a lane in Hase or Sakanoshita can dazzle with sand-and-sea-reflected sunlight. Turn a corner and be transported from an avenue in the present era of Reiwa to a lane in Taishō or Shōwa, with, say, an earthen warehouse or a cylindrical red postbox or a tile-roofed inn on a cul-de-sac or a shop with clear-paned sliding doors beneath a signboard of rusted tin sheet that says Omocha (Toys).

The lane off Wakamiya ōji, just before it ends at the Third Torii of Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, is so fetching you wish you lived there. It is just wide enough for the rickshaws trundling tourists between traditional black fences to this unspoiled city quarter. At the bend in the lane stands a venerable wooden building, the former home of novelist Osaragi Jirō (1897–1973). Across from his former home was his other residence, built in 1920. With a thatched roof, sukiya (teahouse) features, and spacious tree-dotted garden, it harks back to a city predating high rises, bumper-to-bumper traffic, and concrete-encased shoreline.

While walking you encounter monuments raised like tombstones to memories of the samurai capital. These gray slabs bearing white glyphs in relief number more than eighty and stand alike on back streets and broad avenues. They can take the measure of the former shogun’s seat. The monuments to the East and West Gates of Yoritomo’s administrative complex at ōkura are 340 paces apart. The complex was half as wide north to south. Thus it was 52,000 square meters, less than a quarter the size of the grounds of Edo Castle, the redoubt of the final samurai government. Discover the monument to Shōchōju-in and realize this temple’s buildings would have filled its narrow valley.

The monuments were erected by the Young Men’s Association in 1917 and beyond. They chronicle the wonders and miracles of the city. One monument (erected 1917) recounts that Nitta Yoshisada hurled his golden sword into the sea; another (1941) that the head of a Kannon statue cast from iron was found at the bottom of a well in Yukinoshita, a discovery giving the well its name, the Kurogane-no-I (Iron Well); and still another (1956) that during a scorching drought in 1271, Nichiren in the hills above Shichirigahama prayed for rain and forthwith the heavens opened.

Kita-Kamakura Station is the gateway to a temple town. Its half dozen Zen temples are within walking distance of one another. Visitors seek tranquility and a limpid atmosphere at Zen-dera. These are found by those who disentangle their minds from worldly cares as they pass through the two-storied temple gate.

Osaragi Jirō and Miyama Susumu have been my guides to the city. Osaragi’s given name was Nojiri Kiyohiko. He took the penname Osaragi, written with the characters for the Great Buddha, which was near his first home in Kamakura. A central figure in the coterie of writers known as the Kamakura Bunshi, he wrote with affection for the city and was passionate about its preservation, leading a movement that was the predecessor of Japan’s National Trust. His great-nephew describes him as a man of balance: the author of adventures for boys and of prize-winning serious novels, a man deeply versed in Japanese tradition and a Francophile who wrote about the Dreyfus Affair. His sukiya residence was testament to this balance: a pile of suzuri ink stones in the tokonoma alcove, cupboards brimming with boxes of scrolls and tea bowls, Song celadon cups and art books in the principal European tongues.

Miyama Susumu (1924–2004) was a historian of Buddhist art. He was a scholar with an unsurpassed knowledge of the Buddhist art of the Kamakura Period, writing more than a dozen books on the temples and statuary of Kamakura. And he possessed a historical imagination that enabled him to envision the former garan of the great religious foundations in all their Sinitic glory.

While Osaragi and Miyama were my guides, I would not have begun, or continued, without the help of many others. Shiino Yoshihiro suggested the idea. Miyano Rikiya, Yukawa Kobin, and Satō Kosei provided valuable counsel. Stephen Mansfield, Eugene Tarshis, Richard Silver, and Mary Corbett encouraged by asking, When will you finish? Tracy Brown read the manuscript and made valuable suggestions. I am grateful to the following individuals for the provision of photographs: Yoshikawa Toshikazu of Sankeien Garden; Enomoto Masako of the Kamakura Museum of Literature; Umezawa Megumi of Kanazawa Bunko; Rui Kinjo and Yasukawa Atsuko of the Osaragi Jiro Memorial Museum; Baba Yusuke and Wachi Yukiko of the Kamakura City Kawakita Film Museum; Imanishi Ayako of the Kaburaki Kiyokata Memorial Art Museum; Hirata Emi of the Kamakura City Central Library; and the staffs of the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, Kanagawa Prefectural Library, Yokohama Archives of History, and Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Literature. I would also like to thank Higashiyama Shinzo for creating maps and Hirai Tomoyoshi for taking photographs. Photographs not credited were taken by the author or are from his collection.

Sources quoted appear in the endnotes. All writers on Kamakura are indebted to the anonymous scribes who wrote the Azuma Kagami (Mirror of Eastern Japan), a historical account of the Kamakura Shogunate. JAANUS (Japanese Architecture and Art Net Users System) was an invaluable source for architectural terms. Also helpful was Mark Schumacher’s A to Z Online Dictionary of Buddhist Statues, which enumerates, for example, the temples on the various Kamakura pilgrimages. Iso Mutsu’s Kamakura: Fact and Legend was invaluable for its description of the city before its devastation in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923.

This book is my Kamakura. I hope that as it leads you to my places of contemplation, you will discover yours and make the city your own. Do walk.

Note on Style

Japanese names appear in the Japanese order, family name first. A macron, the straight bar placed above a letter, indicates a long vowel, as in Kenchō-ji or Hachimangū. The macron is not used for widely known Japanese words; for example, Tokyo and Kyoto. Headings include translations of shrine and temple names that lend themselves to rendering in English. These are unofficial, only added to give the flavor of the Japanese name. An asterisk indicates the explanation of a term in the endnotes.

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The Drawing of Kamakura Nippon. A large swath of the city center was still under cultivation two decades after the opening of Kamakura Station (lower center). Shoreward hostelries herald the city’s transition to a resort. Religious foundations with English-language labels suggest these were the most-visited sights. Published by Seikosha in Asakusa, Tokyo, in 1896. Courtesy the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History.

PART ONE

First Samurai Capital

CHAPTER 1

TO KAMAKURA CASTLE

I-1-1(Azuma).JPG

Page in the Azuma Kagami recounting that on March 15, 1182, Yoritomo ordered a road built from Tsurugaoka Hachimangū to the bay. Edition published in 1626. Collection of the Kamakura Museum of Literature.

T he first samurai capital rose in the blood-dimmed last decades of the twelfth century. Minamoto no Yoritomo, his army routed by a Taira force at Ishibashiyama in Sagami Province, retreated across the bay to the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula in late August of 1180. He dispatched to local chieftains emissaries requesting reinforcements. Adachi Morinaga, an early partisan of his, delivered the appeal to Chiba Tsunetane, the head of the Chiba clan, who forthwith placed his men at Yoritomo’s disposal. Tsunetane gave Yoritomo words of advice that were significant in the founding of Kamakura as the seat of the first samurai government: Your present location is not a stronghold. Nor does it have an association with the Minamoto. You should go to Kamakura in Sagami Province posthaste.

Yoritomo took this advice. He led his army up the Bōsō Peninsula, forded the Sumida River, and traversed Musashi Province. He would enter Kamakura five weeks later. As he makes his way up the peninsula, let us sketch his life and times.

The failure of the central government in Kyoto to maintain order in the provinces from the late eighth century gave birth to the samurai. By the late twelfth century, this military caste had effective control of the government. The two great warrior clans, the Taira and Minamoto, came to blows in 1160. The Minamoto were defeated and their leader, Yoshitomo (1123–60), was killed, his severed head sent to Kyoto and gibbeted at a prison gate. The Taira, led by Kiyomori (1118–81), became the new courtiers.

Yoritomo was the third son of Yoshitomo. His mother was of good lineage, the daughter of Fujiwara no Suenori, a priest at Atsuta Shrine in Owari Province (today the western half of Aichi Prefecture). Thus he was of noble blood and in the direct line of the Minamoto. After his father’s death, the teenage Yoritomo was exiled to Hirugakojima on the Izu Peninsula. There he married Masako, the daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa, the head of a powerful local family. Tokimasa approved of the marriage, for he recognized Yoritomo’s potential.

Meanwhile, in the capital of Kyoto in the west, Taira no Kiyomori placed his grandson on the throne, deposed dozens of officials, imprisoned the former emperor Go-Shirakawa, and moved the seat of government to his own estate. His tyranny exasperated the court. Finally, in 1180, Prince Mochihito, the second son of Go-Shirakawa, issued an edict commanding Yoritomo to raise an army and overthrow Kiyomori. Yoritomo rose in revolt. Hōjō Tokimasa and warriors in Izu and western Sagami with whom he had been in communication rallied to his banner. Yoritomo seized the provincial capital in a surprise attack and advanced to the Kanto plain with Prince Mochihito’s edict held aloft at the van of his army. But he was met by more than three thousand horsemen led by Oba Kagechika, a fiercely loyal partisan of Kiyomori’s, at Ishibashiyama (now the southern part of Odawara City) and routed. He beat a water retreat to the tip of the Bōsō Peninsula.

As Yoritomo traveled counterclockwise around the bay, he was joined by local chieftains. The writer Sugawara Makoto compared Yoritomo’s progress to the expedition of Momotarō in the fairy tale of the same name. A childless elderly couple finds a large peach. As the old woman raises a knife to slice the fruit, it splits open and out steps a little boy. They name him Momotarō, Peach Boy. Momotarō grows up a strong lad. He hears of an island of ogres who kidnap and plunder. He resolves to chastise them. He sets off in high spirits with millet dumplings the old woman prepared. He comes to a steep mountain, where he meets a puppy.

What’s in the pouch? the puppy asks.

The tastiest millet dumplings in all of Japan.

If you give me one, I’ll go with you.

Momotarō gives the puppy a dumpling and off they go. The two reach a forest. A monkey descends from a tree and asks for a millet dumpling. Momotarō obliges. Now they are three. They reach a large field, where a pheasant appears. It, too, joins Momotarō in exchange for a dumpling. The four cross the sea to Ogre Island. Each utilizes his special skill in the ensuing battle. They vanquish the ogres and return home triumphant.

Momotarō is a favorite character of Japanese children. He was not only brave and strong, but also clever, as evidenced by his exchanging dumplings for service. Yoritomo enlisted powerful local lords in southern Kanto as Momotarō gathered companions on the way to Ogre Island. What were Yoritomo’s dumplings? Guarantees to safeguard local chieftains’ fiefs and to grant them estates for loyal service. Land was the coin of the realm.

On October 6, 1180, Yoritomo entered Kamakura, a place engirdled by mountains in three directions and facing Sagami Bay on the south. The courtier Kujō Kanezane jotted in his diary a term encapsulating this almost inaccessible fastness: Kamakura Castle.

Chiba Tsunetane had spoken of the Minamoto’s connection to Kamakura. It was a connection dating back more than a hundred years. In 1050, Minamoto no Yoriyoshi was commissioned by the government to put down the rebellion of Abe Yoritoki in Mutsu Province in the northeast. Before setting out with his fifteen-year-old son Yoshiie, he prayed for victory at Iwashimizu Hachimangū Shrine in Yamashiro Province (Kyoto prefecture today). After a years-long campaign, he prevailed. In 1063, on his way back to Kyoto, he stopped in Kamakura and built a shrine to Hachiman, the god of war, in gratitude for the answer to his prayer. Yoshiie reportedly repaired the shrine, known as Yui Wakamiya or Moto Hachiman, in 1081, revitalizing the clan’s connection with Kamakura. After the mid-twelfth century Yoshitomo, Yoshiie’s great-grandson and Yoritomo’s father, built a residence in Kamegayatsu (now part of Ōgigayatsu). Today the site is in the precincts of Jufuku-ji. Turn left at the temple’s main gate and you come to an embankment separating the precincts from private land. The embankment is said to be the former rampart made from the earth excavated for the moat surrounding Yoshitomo’s residence.

We imagine that Yoritomo’s principal generals, Miura Yoshizumi, Chiba Tsunetane, and Kazusanosuke Hirotsune, helped sway Yoritomo to establish his headquarters in Kamakura. Tsunetane had already made the argument for Kamakura. As well, all three commanders made their bases near Kamakura, so its choice as Yoritomo’s stronghold would facilitate their rushing to his aid in a contingency. Proximity would also give them the ear of the Lord of Kamakura.

Yoritomo would have been disinclined to resist such arguments, for he was predisposed to establish a stronghold distant from Kyoto in the west. He had observed the soft, silken ways of the capital enervate the Taira, his rival clan in arms. Kamakura, far from elaborate court rituals and entangling palace intrigues, would be a military capital where warriors would pursue the Way of the Bow and Horse, live frugal lives, revere the gods and Buddhas, and be ready to sacrifice themselves for their lord.

Lord Yoritomo’s entrance into Kamakura was so sudden that there was yet no residence prepared for him, says the Azuma Kagami, the official history of his military government. Yoritomo spent his first night at the home of a local resident. Early the next morning he prayed from afar to the branch of Iwashimizu Hachimangū Shrine established near the shore by his forebear Yoshiie. Worship of Hachiman in Kamakura had lapsed after Yoshiie repaired the shrine to the Minamoto’s tutelary deity a century earlier. Perhaps Yoritomo also chose Kamakura to revive religious services there.

Next he set out for the Minamoto ancestral home in Kamegayatsu. He chose not to build there, for the grounds were narrow and construction would have entailed destroying a shrine to Yoshitomo. In the end, he built his mansion in Ōkura, at a spot where Seisen Elementary School now stands. His mansion, like those of the Kyoto nobility, was fundamentally in the shinden-zukuri style, with a main building along a north-south axis flanked by two other buildings, the entire complex surrounded by an earthen wall. There were, however, differences. Aristocrats’ mansions in Kyoto had main gates on the east and west but not on the south side. But the main gate of the ōkura Palace, as Yoritomo’s mansion was called, was on the south side. Another difference was that the building on the east was the Samurai-dokoro. This was a bureau responsible for all military affairs including guarding the shogun’s palace, holding tribunals, and nominating officials. Its establishment was the first step toward founding the Kamakura Shogunate. Other important organs were the Mandokoro (Administrative Board) and Monchūjo (Board of Inquiry).

The day after he arrived in Kamakura, Yoritomo ordered the division and transfer of the god enshrined at Iwashimizu Hachimangū Shrine in Yuigo Tsurugaoka to a newly built shrine in Kobayashigō, the area at the foot of a mountain in the north. The new shrine was but a crude expedient with pillars of pine and a roof of thatch. Construction of a shrine worthy of the Minamoto’s tutelary deity began in May of the next year. Kamakura had no carpenters skilled in building religious buildings, so these artisans were summoned from Sensō-ji temple in Musashi Province.

In 1184, Yoritomo ordered the construction of a temple for the repose of his father Yoshitomo. It was called Shōchōju-in. It was also known as the ōmidō (Great Temple) for its large scale and as the Minami Midō (Southern Temple) because of its location southeast of the Ōkura Palace. Yoritomo summoned from the capital region superlative artisans to carve the principal Buddhist statue, Amida Nyorai, and to paint murals of the Western Pure Land in the main hall. On August 30, he rode to the mouth of the Katase River to receive from an emissary of Go-Shirakawa the severed head of his father. On September 30 Yoshitomo’s head was buried with reverence at Shōchōju-in. Completed in 1185, it was the first full-scale temple in Kamakura.

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Monuments marking the site of Shōchōju-in. In the left

corner stand gorintō memorializing Yoshitomo (the larger

one) and his principal retainer, Kamata Masakiyo.

Meanwhile, the Minamoto, under the command of Yoshitsune, Yoritomo’s younger half-brother, delivered the coup de grâce to the Taira in a sea battle at Dan-no-ura, a bay near Shimonoseki. The Minamoto were triumphant.

Yet Yoritomo’s position was not secure. Yoshitsune proved a brilliant tactician in the Minamoto’s war against the Taira, but the brothers fell out, and the cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa’s machinations widened the fraternal rift. Yoritomo dispatched eighty mounted warriors to Kyoto to assassinate his brother. Yoshitsune fled and eventually found refuge with the powerful Fujiwara clan in Hiraizumi in northeastern Honshu. Pressured by Yoritomo, the Fujiwara betrayed their guest. Yoshitsune took his own life at the age of thirty in 1189. In June of that year Fujiwara warriors delivered his head, pickled in saké, to Yoritomo.

Yet the Lord of Kamakura was not placated. In July, he sent three armies, one under his own command, on a punitive expedition against the Fujiwara. Their having harbored Yoshitsune was the ostensible reason. This was, of course, a pretext; Yoritomo wanted to eliminate a rival center of power. His armies crushed the Fujiwara, and the glory of the northern clan ended during the rule of its fourth leader, Yasuhira. Yoritomo returned to Kamakura on October 24. Five days later he laid plans for a temple on the model of Daichōju-in at Chūson-ji in Hiraizumi for the repose of his half-brother and those fallen in battle. Construction was delayed until 1191. The temple, called Yōfuku-ji, was one of the glories of Kamakura.

The elimination of potential threats and the building of magnificent religious edifices betokened the shift in temporal power from Kyoto to Kamakura. The Emperor Go-Toba in essence acknowledged this shift by appointing Yoritomo Sei-i Tai Shōgun, Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians, in August 1192. It was a title first granted in the Heian Period. The barbarians had been subdued long before. The conferment of the title was acknowledgement of Yoritomo as the military leader of Japan.

Yoritomo reportedly died in a fall from a horse at the age of fifty-three in January 1199. If he did die in a fall, it was a pathetic end for an advocate of the Way of the Bow and Horse. Speculation about the cause of his death continues. Some say subordinates assassinated him. Partisans of Yoshitsune say the spirit of his younger half-brother exacted revenge. In any case, Yoritomo was a bold, unsentimental commander; politically savvy; and god-fearing, rather than religious, for he was the leader of a warrior caste that did not obey the Buddhist precept prohibiting the taking of life.

Yoritomo had been wise to locate his military government beyond the intrigues at court. Not that Kamakura was free of machinations. Yoriie, his first son and successor, was a skilled horseman and an expert bowman but not of his father’s timber. He was a callow youth of eighteen and of weak character after an indulgent upbringing. The daggers were drawn.

Yoriie fell seriously ill in 1203. Regent Tokimasa moved to transfer half of the administrative power that would devolve to Yoriie’s son to Minamoto no Sanetomo, Yoriie’s younger brother, in response to a challenge to his authority from Hiki Yoshikazu, Yoriie’s father-in-law. This provoked Yoshikazu to plot the overthrow of the Hōjō. Tokimasa detected the plot and had Yoshikazu killed. The young shogun ordered Wada Yoshimori, the head of the Samurai-dokoro, to avenge his father-in-law’s murder. However, Yoshimori turned coat. Tokimasa confined Yoriie at Shuzen-ji in Izu and made his younger brother, Sanetomo, shogun. Yoriie was assassinated in July 1204, likely at the behest of Tokimasa.

Tokimasa restricted to his mansion the twelve-year-old Sanetomo. He appointed himself the head of the Mandokoro and adopted the title of shikken (shogunal regent), as Sanetomo was still in his minority. Tokimasa was now the de facto head of the Kamakura government.

CHAPTER 2

THE HŌJŌ REGENCY

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A monument marking the site of the Utsunomiyazushi shogunate stands

at Utsunomiyazushi Inari Shrine, just east of the stretch of Wakamiya

Ōji between Yukinoshita Catholic Church and Kiyokawa Hospital.

T okimasa’s rule turned tyrannical. In 1205, he was persuaded by his second wife to replace Sanetomo with her son-in-law. First he suppressed Hatakeyama Shigetada (1164–1205), who had taken up arms against the Hōjō to avenge the killing of his son by Tokimasa. Shigetada, the powerful lord of Musashi Province, had been a fiercely loyal retainer of the Minamoto ever since he rendered them distinguished service in the sea battle at Dan-no-ura.

Perhaps for Yoshitoki, a son of Tokimasa’s, his father’s destruction of Shigetada had been too much. As for Masako, she had watched her father kill her first son; she would not stand by and watch him kill her second son and sole surviving child. She might also have had reservations about his usurpation of the government her husband had founded. She colluded with Yoshitoki to shelter Sanetomo. Many shogunal vassals switched allegiance to Yoshitoki. Tokimasa stepped aside, took the tonsure, and retired to the seclusion of Izu where he died ten years later at the age of seventy-eight. Yoshitoki became the guardian of the thirteen-year-old Sanetomo, which is to say, he became the second shikken. He governed together with his sister Masako.

Sanetomo married a noblewoman against the wishes of Masako. She and others had desired he wed the daughter of a certain powerful eastern warrior. Sanetomo, however, was enamored of the aristocratic culture of Kyoto. He studied waka under the great poet Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241). Sanetomo learned his lessons well and is ranked among the great poets in the period since the compilation of the Man’yōshū (Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves) after the mid-eighth century.

Kyoto returned the compliment, and Sanetomo rose quickly at Court. He was granted the title of udaijin (minister of the right) and was due to participate in a ceremony marking the receipt of the title at Tsurugaoka Hachimangūji on January 27, 1219. Yet that morning he seems to have had a sense of impending misfortune. While being dressed, he pulled out a hair and gave it to a member of his guard, saying, Keep this is in memory of me. And before departing the palace, he composed a poem:

Yet despite his sense of foreboding, he did not heed the advice to don armor under his robes.

Regent Yoshitoki was Sanetomo’s sword-bearer in the solemn procession. Kyoto aristocrats were in attendance. As the shogun ascends the long flight of stairs to the main gate, we must return to events of the previous year to comprehend subsequent ones.

In July of 1218, Yoshitoki established a Yakushidō, hall of Yakushi Nyorai, the Buddha of Healing. The Dog God, one of the Twelve Heavenly Generals who guard Yakushi Nyorai, appeared to Yoshitoki in a dream. Sanetomo paid homage at the shrine without incident this year, said the Dog God. But you should not accompany him next year. A ceremony celebrating the completion of the hall was held on December 2. A disciple of Eisai, of Jufuku-ji, officiated. The principal image was carved by Unkei (?–1223). Images of the Twelve Heavenly Generals would have been installed in the hall, although these find no mention in the Azuma Kagami. Let’s return to Tsurugaoka Hachimangūji on January 27.

As Yoshitoki passed through the main gate, he was greeted by the fantasm of a white dog, whereupon he felt ill. He entrusted the role of sword-bearer to one Nakaakira and retired to his quarters. Sanetomo, after his investiture, slowly descended the snow-blanketed steps illuminated by flambeaux. He cut a fine figure in his official costume. Suddenly, from behind a large ginkgo, sprang men with brandished swords. One shouted, I, Kugyō, son of Yoriie, avenge my father’s murder! as he struck down and decapitated Sanetomo. The others slew Nakaakira. Kugyō and his accomplices fled in the confusion but were found and killed.

The following month Yoshitoki visited the Yakushidō. He thanked the Dog God, who, in the guise of a white canine, kept him from harm’s way. According to the Azuma Kagami, at exactly the Hour of the Dog (8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.), the image of the Dog God vanished from the Yakushidō and the admonitory white canine appeared to Yoshitoki. It may surprise that an official history would report such events as facts, but it was an age of belief in divine intervention, yin and yang, inauspicious directions, omens, curses, apparitions, and visitations in dreams.

The assassination raised questions. Was it an act of revenge? Were the assassins cat’s-paws? Had Yoshitoki’s exit been arranged? These questions have tickled the fancy of countless novelists. Miyama Susumu pinned the assassination on Yoshitoki. The regent had no doubt built the Yakushidō as part of a far-sighted pretext to absent himself from the investiture ceremony. He had exploited belief. He had used stories of prophetic visions and auspicious omens to preempt suspicion of his involvement. But in making this charge Miyama confesses that his attraction to Sanetomo predisposes him to dislike the cunning Yoshitoki.

Thus ended Yoritomo’s direct line. Subsequently, the Hōjō regents selected the scions of noble houses and brought them to