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POWER and CLASS IN JAPAN, 500 to 1333
Arrival of the Kamakura Shogunate, 1156-1185
The domination of Japan from the imperial capital of Kyoto was coming to an end. Rule had been by emperors and their regents, appointed by the most influential families at court. In 1156 two noble families, each related to the family of the emperors, the Yamato family, began fighting. They were giving birth to a new era, to be called the Age of the Warriors -- later to be called medieval Japan.
One of two noble families at war was the Taira, centered by the Inland Sea. The other was the Minamoto, which had been allied with the Fujiwara family. These were on-again, off-again wars across thirty years. The dispute was over who would be the next figurehead emperor. The Taira family won a big round in the war. The Fujiwara were eclipsed for the time being. From the capital, Kyoto, the head of the Taira family ruled for ten years, appointing which Yamato family member was to be emperor. His army grabbed more land, some of it from the Buddhists. He had members of the Minamoto family hunted down and killed. But, demonstrating confidence in his power, he spared the sons of his former Minamoto rival, keeping the eldest of them hostage at the small fishing village of Kamakura.
This eldest son, Minamoto no Yorimoto, was a prisoner among relatives of the Taira family ruler, and Yorimoto married into the ruler's extended family. Yorimoto took advantage of a new conflict over succession to organize an army of dissatisfied men, and five more years of war ensued: the Genpei War. Minamoto no Yorimoto seized Kyoto and drove the Taira back to their stronghold by the Inland Sea. In a sea battle between Honshu and Kyushu islands, the battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, the Minamoto clan fleet defeated the Taira clan fleet. Yorimoto was given the title of the emperor's military deputy: shogun. He had the entire Taira family hunted down and slaughtered. And rather than stay at the capital, he returned to his base at Kamakura, from which he appeared to be in control of all Japan. What was to be known as Japan's Kamakura Period had begun.
Recommended Books
The History of Japan, by Louis B Perez, Greenwood Press, 1998
Japan: the Story of a Nation, by Edwin, by Edwin O Reichauer, Fourth Edition, Alfred A Knopf, 1989
The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol 3, editors Kazo Yamamura et al, Cambridge University Press, 1990
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Copyright © 2009 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.