Minamoto no Yoritomo

8 Key excerpts on "Minamoto no Yoritomo"

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  Japan

  History and Culture from Classical to Cool

  • Nancy K. Stalker(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  Courtiers resented the boorish upstarts who had invaded their capital and usurped their privileges and began to search for alternative sources of military power that might oust the Taira. The Minamoto leader Yoshitomo and his eldest sons were killed in the Heiji rebellion, but Kiyomori had spared his younger sons Yoritomo, Noriyori, and Yoshitsune. From his stronghold in Kamakura, Yoritomo mustered the remnants of Minamoto strength in the eastern provinces and launched the Genpei War ( 1180–85 ), a campaign to drive the Taira from the capital. In 1183 , the Minamoto set fire to the Taira palace in Kyoto and forced them to flee to their ancestral homelands around the Inland Sea. The Minamoto achieved final victory in the battle of Dan-no-Ura, one of the most famous in Japanese history, in which most of the Taira were slaughtered and the child emperor Antoku was forced to commit suicide by jumping into the sea along with his grand-mother, the widow of Kiyomori, and the women of the Taira court. Establishment of Kamakura Bakufu The Minamoto had long been building their own institutions of warrior rule in Kamakura, a city in the eastern Kanto plain. Under Yoritomo, the age of warrior government—the medieval period of Japanese history—was 82 / Rise and Rule of the Warrior Class set to begin. There were three shogunates in Japanese history: the first established by the Minamoto in Kamakura; the Muromachi bakufu estab-lished by the Ashikaga shoguns in Kyoto during the fourteenth and fif-teenth centuries; and the Tokugawa bakufu, which ruled from the seven-teenth to the mid-nineteenth century from the city of Edo (now Tokyo). The source of bakufu authority, however, remained the imperial court. As noted above, the title of Shogun made Minamoto no Yoritomo the military protector of court privileges. The court accepted the bakufu as an agent concerned with maintaining discipline in the warrior order, headed by Yoritomo and his vassals.

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  Swords, Oaths, and Prophetic Visions

  Authoring Warrior Rule in Medieval Japan

  • Elizabeth A. Oyler(Author)
  • 2005(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  To make matters worse, he is generally loathed for ordering the deaths of his cousin Yoshinaka, and, more importantly, his brother Yoshitsune. 6 Yet it is hard to ¤nd narrative or dramatic accounts that hold him culpable for these acts: in contrast to archetypal villains like Taira Kiyomori or Lord Kira of Chûshingura (The revenge of the forty-seven rônin), he does not ¤gure centrally in the tragic tales of his victims. Blame for his unpardon-able acts is formally attributed elsewhere, and he is pushed into the shad-ows, remaining ever a troubling mystery. Yoritomo is chie¶y remembered for having authored a legal system that signi¤cantly altered the political map of Japan. 7 As a political found-ing father, he redrew the contours of the realm so as to highlight the signi¤cance of the provinces. Largely as a consequence of this new empha-sis, peripheral people and places were brought to the fore not only as his-torical and political subjects, but as narrative subjects as well—warriors, peasants, and itinerant performers became the central characters of newly emerging genres and works. As the heir to Minamoto hegemony, the ¤rst shôgun, and victor of the Genpei War, Yoritomo more than any other ¤gure represents the impetus for the change that narratives of the period describe. He is the force shaping the people and the events of the war into history. 8 There is thus a puzzling contradiction in Yoritomo’s characteriza-tion between, simultaneously, the political and historical founding father and a shadowy, secondary character across the many texts about the Gen-pei period. This contradiction motivates my book in general and this chapter in particular. How does Yoritomo, the political axis around whom so many plots revolve, ¤t into cultural narratives of the Genpei pe-

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  A History of Japan

  From Stone Age to Superpower

  • K. Henshall(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  He was to become immortalised in Japanese literature and legend as the arche- typical tragic hero. For good measure those who hunted Yoshitsune down were them- selves attacked and killed by Yoritomo shortly afterwards. More of Yoritomo’s own relatives and associates were also ‘terminally elimin- ated’ as potential threats. Stating the obvious, Yoritomo’s elimination of relatives may not have been in the best interests of the family. When he was killed in 1199 by a fall from his horse—not in battle, but in rather suspicious circum- stances 40 —there was no really suitable Minamoto successor. He left two sons, Yoriie (1182–1204) and Sanetomo (1192–1219), and each nom- inally became shogun. However, neither of them was strong enough or mature enough to achieve real control in the chaos of murder and intrigue that followed Yoritomo’s death. Of Courtiers and Warriors 33 It was no time or place for the faint-hearted or those swayed by senti- mental concerns such as family ties. Both Yoriie and Sanetomo were controlled and eventually murdered by their own family. Behind many of the intrigues was their mother, Yoritomo’s widow Hojo Masako (1157–1225). In effect, she controlled the government, and became popularly known as the ‘nun-shogun’ (ama shogun, a reference to her having taking nun’s vows on Yoritomo’s death). One of the devices used by Masako was the institution of a shogunal regent. This reduced the position of shogun to a nominal one, with manipulable court nobles generally being appointed as shogun and real control being exercised by the Hojo. The Hojo shogunal regents became particularly dominant after 1221, when they survived a challenge to their power from the retired emperor Go-Toba (1180–1239, r. 1183–98). Go-Toba had memories of the Gen- pei War when he had been installed as an infant emperor after Antoku’s death, and had long opposed the Minamoto and Hojo.

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  The Mikado's Empire

  A History of Japan from the Age of Gods to the Meiji Era (660 BC - AD 1872)

  • William Griffis(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Stone Bridge Press

    (Publisher)

  Since the period of Heiji (1159), I have served the imperial house. I have ruled under heaven (the empire) absolutely. I have attained the highest rank possible to a subject. I am the grandfather of the emperor on his mother’s side. Is there still a regret? My regret is only that I am dying, and have not yet seen the head of Yoritomo of the Minamoto. After my decease, do not make offerings to Buddha on my behalf; do not read the sacred books. Only cut off the head of Yoritomo of the Minamoto, and hang it on my tomb. Let all my sons and grandsons, retainers and servants, each and every one, follow out my commands, and on no account neglect them.” So saying, Kiyomori died at the age of sixty-four. His tomb, near Hiôgo, is marked by an upright monolith and railing of granite. Munémori, his son, became head of the Taira house. Strange words from a death-bed; yet such as these were more than once used Yoritomo and the Minamoto Family 149 by dying Japanese warriors. Yoritomo’s head was on his body when, eighteen years afterward, in 1199, he died peacefully in his bed. Nevertheless, while in Kamakura, his bed-chamber was nightly guarded by chosen warriors, lest treachery might cut off the hopes of the Minamoto. The flames of war were now lighted throughout the whole empire. From Kamakura forces were sent into the provinces of Hitachi, in the East, and of Echizen and Kaga, North and West, destroying the authority of the Kiôto bureaucracy. Victory and increase made the army of the rising clan invincible. After numerous bloody skirmishes, the victors advanced through Ômi, and swooped on the chief prize, and Kiôto, the coveted capital, was in their hands. The captors of the city were Yukiiyé and Yoshinaka, the uncle and cousin of Yoritomo respectively. The Taira, with the young mikado, Antoku, and his wife, Kiyomori’s daughter, fled.

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  The Taming of the Samurai

  Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan

  • Eiko Ikegami(Author)
  • 1997(Publication Date)
  • Harvard University Press

    (Publisher)

  After defeating the troops of the Taira in 1185, Yoritomo established the first government fully under samurai control, the Kamakura shogunate. 2 His success was facilitated by strong pressures from the eastern samurai bands to legitimate their landholdings. Unlike the Taira regime, Yoritomo refused to be drawn into the imperial political order, and he gradually developed independent governmental institutions in Kamakura at a distance of a dozen days from Kyoto. Yoritomo claimed the highest political authority in the hierarchy of the samurai. To be sure, the continued existence of the imperial court at Kyoto resulted in a dual structure within the medieval Japanese state; therefore, the samurai’s connections with shōen proprietors, usually Kyoto aristocrats or religious institutions protected by the legal code of the imperial court, also continued even after the formal establishment of the new samurai regime. However, after the war of 1221, in which the Kamakura forces defeated the imperial troops, it was clear that the shogunate was the stronger power. The Kamakura regime deliberately located their political capital, Kamakura, a considerable distance from the courtly cultural center of Kyoto. The Kamakura samurai cultivated a fierce pride in their military identity and attempted to overcome their feelings of cultural inferiority. The early development of samurai vassalage, their distinctive form of military alliance, was clearly an important step in the extension of their power base and cultural confidence. On the one hand, the Kamakura samurai strongly admired the aristocratic high culture and often sought to learn the characteristic manners of the aristocracy, such as courtly etiquette and the composition of poetry (waka). The artistic refinement of the emperor’s court attracted the samurai, who did not have such a cultural resource

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  The Making of Modern Japan

  • Marius B. Jansen, Marius B. Jansen(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Belknap Press

    (Publisher)

  Japan entered a period of warrior rule from which it did not emerge until the fall of the Tokugawa in 1868. That period was nevertheless one of constant development and change. The first line of Minamoto shoguns—from whom the Tokugawa were to claim descent, albeit on dubious grounds—established a line of military au-thority that supplemented, and in time overshadowed, that of the imperial court. It forced from the court permission to appoint stewards to private es-tates throughout the land, and constables or military governors in the prov-inces to serve as officials of the new system of justice that was established. Although the Minamoto line itself soon ended, a line of regents, hereditary in the Ho ¯jo ¯ family, carried on its functions. At the imperial capital the wishes of emperors, who frequently abdicated to exercise greater influence from mo-nastic establishments, counted for much less. An attempt by a retired emperor to challenge Kamakura dominance was quickly snuffed out and led to more forceful measures by the Kamakura leaders. Shadow shoguns dealt with shadow emperors, and Kamakura institutions remained an overlay on those of the court. Gradually provincial and local interests came to count for more. The tenuous balance was brought to an end by the great invasions launched by the Mongol overlords of China in 1274 and 1281. Japan emerged from this crisis with its sovereignty intact, but its leaders had conquered no new lands with which they could reward their men. By 1333 a discontented emperor was 4 The Making of Modern Japan able to rally enough discontented warriors to bring the Kamakura shogunate to its final crisis. The second shogunal line, that of the Ashikaga, chose to establish its head-quarters in the imperial capital of Kyoto.

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  The Archaeology of Medieval Towns: Case Studies from Japan and Europe

  • Simon Kaner, Brian Ayers, Richard Pearson, Oscar Wrenn, Simon Kaner, Brian Ayers, Richard Pearson, Oscar Wrenn(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Archaeopress Archaeology

    (Publisher)

  Summary In addition to their commercial importance, a significant aspect of medieval towns and cities is their political and administrative role. This paper by Oka Yōichirō treats the early medieval eastern political centre of eastern Japan, Kamakura, in the most significant period of its history, from 1180 to 1225. It deals with some of the structural and architectural changes which occurred as it came to rival the power of Kyōto, the ancient capital from the 8th century. Oka compares texts from the Azuma Kagami , the diary chronicle of the shogunate, the feudal military government, which was located in Kamakura, written after 1266, with the archaeological record. Kamakura was a centre of some importance before the 12th century. In 1073 the clan shrine of the Minamoto clan, the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, was founded. In the 1170s Minamoto Yoritomo, descendant of the Minamoto clan, exiled from Kyōto, married into the powerful local Hōjō family, regents for the shoguns, who were often replaced and sometimes were very young. Yoritomo arrived in Kamakura in 1180 and set about to establish a regional civil government from heterogeneous groups of local powers as a kind of independent kingdom in the east, known in Japan as Tōgoku (Shinoda 1960:62-63, Mass 1982:125). Gradually Kamakura changed from the centre of a local polity to an integral part of the Japanese polity centred in Kyōto. By 1185, the shogunate was in a transitional form, neither purely feudal nor yet a national institution (Shinoda 1960:137, Hurst 1982:5). Three regents ( shikken ) ruled on behalf of the shogun, from 1199 to 1242. Hōjō Tokimasa became the regent for Yoritomo’s young heir in 1199. The second regent was Hōjō Yoshitoki (r. 1205 to 1224), He was followed by Hōjō Yasutoki who ruled from 1224 to 1242. By the time of the third regent, a kind of consultative board of councilors ( hyōjōshū ) was part of the Kamakura administration (Goble 1982: 168).

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  The Future and the Past

  A Translation and Study of the Gukansho, an Interpretative History of Japan written in 1219

  • Delmer Brown, Ichiro Ishida, Delmer Brown, Ichiro Ishida(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  130 Military Age I Sengaku, were among the Holy Men (hijiri) who had been sent into exile. While Mongaku was close to Yoritomo day and night during the four years the two men were in exile on the Izu peninsula, Mongaku did not receive crafty ideas [from Mitsuyoshi] but made deductions about the inner feelings of people, high and low, and then told Yoritomo what had been deduced. After Yoritomo mobilized his forces in 1180 and moved to the attack, he was accompanied by KAJIWARA Heizo Kagetoki, DOI Jiro Sanehira, and his father-in-law HOJO Shiro Tokimasa of Izu. With the backing of these men Yoritomo intended to subjugate the east- ern provinces, but because the TAIRA had been in control of the state for a long time, the TAIRA had a large number of retainers even in these eastern provinces, including the two HATAKEYAMA brothers (Shigenori and Arishige). Since the HATAKEYAMA brothers were then at the capital, Shigenori's son Shigetada came to engage Yoritomo's forces in battle, chasing Yoritomo into the Hakone mountains and bottling him up. Because Yoritomo had become dis- couraged enough to take off his armor, DOI Sanehira—an old man—said: "There is a proper way for a great Shogun to remove his armor." He took a pine limb, placed it under the armor, and then put the helmet on the limb. We are told that Sanehira's behavior was magnificent. After that, Yoritomo boarded a boat with his retainers, proceeded to the stronghold of Hachiro Hirotsune (Deputy Gover- nor of Kazusa), and received Hirotsune's support. Then everyone in the eastern provinces placed himself under Yoritomo. The MIURA group, on its way to Yoritomo's base, fought and conquered the HATAKEYAMA. Thenceforth Yoritomo's forces were concentrated in one area. In the northern provinces, MINAMOTO Yoshinaka (1154-84)—the "peerless man of Kiso" who was the son of MINAMOTO Yoshikata (Master of the Crown Prince's Household)—mobilized troops and allied himself with Yoritomo.

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