将軍 Shogun

The first shogunate, 1192 to 1333

Kamakura

鎌倉Kamakura kah-mah-koo-rah

A warrior who had won a civil war took the title of shogun, governed from his own town in the east, and never gave the title back.

A strip timeline from 750 to 1900 with the Kamakura shogunate, 1192 to 1333, highlighted.

The Genpei War

The Taira and the Minamoto fought the Genpei War from 1180. It ended in 1185 with the destruction of the Taira at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura, where the child emperor Antoku, a Taira grandson, was drowned.

Yoritomo

Painted portrait of a seated nobleman in stiff black court robes and a tall black cap, holding a pale wooden baton, with a sword at his side.
The portrait at Jingo-ji in Kyoto long said to show Minamoto no Yoritomo. Some historians now think it shows someone else.Traditionally attributed to Fujiwara no Takanobu, Jingo-ji, Kyoto. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The victor, Minamoto no Yoritomo, did not move to Kyoto. He governed from his own base at Kamakura, far to the east, and in 1192 the court named him sei-i taishōgun. Now the title belonged to the man who actually ruled the country, and it no longer lapsed.

Many historians date his government from 1185 instead, when he won the right to appoint his own men as stewards and constables in the provinces. Either way, Japan now had two centres: the emperor’s court in Kyoto, which kept its ceremonies and titles, and the shogun’s government in Kamakura, which kept the peace and the land.

The Hōjō regents

Old sepia photograph of a huge seated bronze Buddha on a stone platform, with trees behind and lanterns in front.
The Great Buddha of Kamakura, cast in the thirteenth century, photographed around 1900.Adolph de Meyer, about 1900, Metropolitan Museum of Art. CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Power soon slipped one step further from the throne. After Yoritomo died in 1199 and his two sons were gone, the shoguns were boys brought from the Fujiwara and then imperial princes, while the family of Yoritomo’s widow, the Hōjō, governed in their name as regents, shikken.

So the emperor had a shogun, and the shogun had a regent, and it was the regent who ruled. There were nine Kamakura shoguns in all.

The Mongols

It was the Hōjō regency that met the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281, sent by Kublai Khan. Both were beaten back, with the help of storms later remembered as kamikaze, the divine wind.

Scroll painting of a mounted samurai whose wounded horse bleeds as a bomb bursts beside him and arrows fly.
Takezaki Suenaga charges the Mongol invaders in 1274, from the scrolls he had made about his service, around 1293.Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba, about 1293. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Victory brought no spoils to share out, and the warriors who had fought expected reward. The cost of the wars weakened the Hōjō. In 1333 Emperor Go-Daigo rose against them, Kamakura fell, and for three years he tried to govern in person, a period known as the Kenmu Restoration.