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The Kamakura Shogunate
 [Minamoto no] Yoritomo established the shogunate on
firm foundations, but did not succeed in founding a dynasty of
shoguns. He killed off rivals within his own family, but his death in 1199 was followed by a struggle for power.
Emerging victorious
was the
Hojo, the family of Yoritomo’s remarkable, strong-minded widow, Masako
(1157-1225), who herself dominated shogunal politics for a time and was dubbed the “nun shogun.” Her father became the first in a line of de facto Hojo rulers,
although they never assumed the office of shogun. That was held
by a puppet, who after 1219 was not even a Minamoto, because in that year a
Fujiwara infant received the appointment. Meanwhile, the Hojo, by
placing family members in key posts, exercised control over the bakufu. In this way, real
power was doubly divorced from apparent authority: in theory
Japan was ruled by an emperor, but this emperor was actually under the
control of his abdicated father (the retired emperor); meanwhile, in
Kamakura, the other locus of government, the power ostensibly “delegated” to the shogun was actually
exercised by Hojo ministers. [BHJC, 83-4]
The Mongol
Invasions
 In 1266, even
before the conquest of the Southern Song had
been completed, Khubilai Khan dispatched his first messenger to Japan
demanding submission. This threat produced great consternation at
court in Kyoto, but the shogunate remained calm, determined to
resist.
It took the Mongols until 1274 to organize a military expedition, but
in that year a force of about 30,000 was  sent
to Japan. They landed near Hakata, in northern Kyushu, and fought
briefly with
a
Japanese force assembled by the bakufu but consisting mostly of local warriors. Fortunately for the Japanese, a great storm destroyed this
expedition.
Heavy casualties did not deter Khubilai Khan from trying again. He
renewed his demands only to meet with rebuff; the Japanese showed
their determination to resist by executing his envoys.  In 1281
Khubilai sent a much larger force, estimated at 140,000 men, to crush
the Japanese. But the shogunate, too, had used the intervening
years
in military preparation: they built a stone wall along Hakata
Bay,
amassed troops, and trained them in the techniques of group fighting
employed by the Mongols, which contrasted with the individual combat
customary in Japanese warfare.
 They fought for seven weeks before
nature intervened once more; another great storm, called the kamikaze (“divine wind”) by the Japanese, settled the issue. About half
the men
sent by Khubilai perished in this fruitless attempt to add Japan to his
empire. [BHJC, 85]
In
repulsing these attacks, the shogunate achieved a great success and
further increased its power vis-à-vis the civilian
court. But it had to share the glory of victory with temples and
shrines, which claimed credit for securing divine
intervention. Indeed, the notion of Japan as a special land
protected by its
deities gained currency from this time....For the shogunate, however,
the Mongol invasions proved its eventual undoing. Fighting the
Mongol invaders, unlike
internal warfare, brought in no new lands or booty with which to meet
the expectations of warriors demanding their just rewards. When
the shogunate proved unable to satisfy
warrior claims, the bushi
lost confidence in the regime. Their loyalty was weakened, and as
they increasingly turned for support increasingly to local authorities
(military governors and the stronger stewards), centrifugal forces came
to the
fore. [BHJC, 85]
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Between the Kamakura and
Ashikaga shogunates, as earlier between the Heian and Kamakura periods,
there was a brief  interlude. The Kenmu (Kemmu)
Restoration of Emperor
Go-Daigo (1288-1339) was an attempt to reassert the prerogatives of the
throne similar to the earlier efforts of Emperor Go-Toba. Because
it confronted a much weakened shogunate, the restoration had
considerable initial success. Even after Kyoto was lost, there
was sufficient momentum to sustain a government in exile in the
mountains of Yoshino, south of Nara, which for over half a century
provided at least a potential rallying point for those opposed to the
Ashikaga. Not until 1392 did it come to an end. [BHJC, 101]
Fighting began
in 1331 when the shogunate tried to force Go-Daigo to abdicate. At
first Go-Daigo suffered setbacks, including capture and exile to the
Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan. But the bakufu was
unable to suppress Go-Daigo’s coalition....He returned to Kyoto
in triumph after Ashikaga Takauji (1305-1358), commander of a bakufu
force sent to destroy him, changed sides....Another important Go-Daigo
warrior ally, Nitta Yoshisada (1301-1338), seized Kamakura in the name
of Go-Daigo and put an end to the power of the Hojo family and to the
Kamakura bakufu.
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The principal war tale that narrates the fighting
between, first, the supporters of Go-Daigo and of the Kamakura
shogunate and, later, after the failure of the Kenmu Restoration, those
of the Northern and Southern Courts is the Taiheiki (Chronicles of Great Peace). The Taiheiki is often thought
to be a tract whose anonymous author or authors argue that the
Southern, and not the Northern, Court was the legitimate seat of
imperial authority between 1336 and 1392. But the Taiheiki does not explicitly
declare the Southern Court to be legitimate; rather, it portrays a
group of warrior heroes whose loyalty to Go-Daigo and, subsequently,
the Southern Court was of such a superbly self-sacrificing, admirable
character that later generations of Japanese believed the Southern
Court was legitimate in large part because they could not believe that
such heroes could have fought and died for an “illegitimate”
cause. Foremost among the Taiheiki’s
loyalist heroes—and indeed,
the man regarded as Japan’s greatest hero until at least the end of
World War II—was Kusunoki
Masashige (d. 1336). [SJT, 284]
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The
Death of Kusunoki Masashige
After failure of the Kenmu Restoration in 1336,
Go-Daigo...rejects Masashige’s
advice about strategy and insists that he and Nitta Yoshisada, the
leading loyalist general, meet in a showdown battle with Ashikaga
Takauji at Minatogawa in Hyogo. Masashige obeys with the
knowledge
that he will die in this battle, and symbolically, so also will Go-Daigo’s
cause. [SJT, 287]
The
thirteen members of the Kusunoki family and their
sixty retainers aligned themselves in two rows in the six-bay reception
hall. Reciting the nembutsu ten times in unison, they cut their
bellies
as one. Masashige, occupying the seat of honor, turned to his
brother
Masasue. “Well now, it is said that one’s last thoughts in this
life
determine the goodness or evil of one’s next incarnation. Into
which
of the nine realms of existence would you like to be reborn?”
Laughing
loudly, Masasue replied: “It is my wish to be reborn again and
again
for seven lives into this same existence in order to destroy the
enemies
of the court!” Masashige was greatly pleased. “Although it
is
deeply sinful, it is also my wish. Let us therefore be born again
into this life to fulfill our cherished dream!” Stabbing each
other,
the brothers fell down on the same pillow.
Sixteen men from prominent
families, including Hashimoto Hachiro Masakazu, the governor of
Kawachi,
Usami Masayasu, Jinguji Taro Masamoro, and Wada Goro Masataka, along
with
fifty of their followers, lined up in a row, each in his own way, and
cut
their bellies.
Kikuchi Shichiro Taketomo
had come as the emissary
of his older brother, the governor of Hizen, to observe the fighting at
Suma-guchi and happened upon Masashige’s seppuku. How, he thought,
could he shamelessly forsake Masashige and return home? And so he
too committed suicide and fell into the flames.
…Masashige, a man combining
the three virtues of wisdom, benevolence, and courage, whose fidelity
is
unequaled by anyone from ancient times to the present, has chosen death
as the proper way. His and his brother’s deaths by suicide are
omens
that a sagely sovereign has again lost the country and traitorous
subjects
are running amok. [SJT, 290-291] |
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It is characteristic of the age that the Ashikaga
downfall came not at the hands of a more powerful family or coalition
but as the result of disputes within its own ranks. In 1464
Yoshimasa, still without an heir, designated his brother as next in
line, but the following year his ambitious and strong-minded wife [Tomiko] bore
him a son. Anxious to have her son be the next shogun, she found
support in a powerful provincial governor’s family, while another
family backed the older claimant. Thus the ground was prepared
for the succession struggle that produced the disastrous Onin
War. The outcome of the war did not lead to the triumph of either
family, but it did destroy the authority of the Ashikaga as well as
half of the city of Kyoto, and it wreaked havoc on much of the
surrounding country. [BHJC, 110]
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