Who ruled Kamakura?

Kamakura is a coastal city in Kanagawa Prefecture in the Kantō region, enclosed by hills on three sides and open to Sagami Bay on the fourth. From the 1180s to 1333 it was the seat of Japan's first military government, the Kamakura shogunate, and in effect a second capital alongside imperial Kyoto. Many of its temples and shrines were founded in that age, and the great bronze Buddha of Kōtoku-in has become an emblem of Japan, although later wars, neglect and earthquakes destroyed much of the medieval city.

Stone tools show people in the area in the Old Stone Age, and the oldest pottery, from about 7500 to 5000 BCE, comes from hillside settlements above a shoreline that then covered today's town centre. The name Kamakura appears in documents of the eighth century. The shogunate's own chronicle, the Azuma Kagami, describes the place before Yoritomo's arrival as remote and forlorn, but historians suspect this was meant to flatter the new regime: there were already temples and shrines by about 700, among them Sugimoto-dera, and the town hosted local government offices and stood where several land and sea routes met.

Minamoto no Yoritomo, heir of a warrior family almost wiped out by the rival Taira, entered Kamakura in 1180 and built his headquarters in the Ōkura valley. His armies, led by his brother Yoshitsune, destroyed the Taira in 1185, and in 1192 the emperor named him shogun. Historians date the start of the Kamakura shogunate anywhere between 1180 and 1192. Older accounts saw power moving wholly from Kyoto to Kamakura, but more recent research stresses that the emperor's court still governed much of the west; the historian Takahashi has argued that Kamakura was a rival centre of power rather than a true national capital.

Yoritomo died in 1199 after a fall from his horse, and his line soon collapsed. His widow's family, the Hōjō, became regents and eliminated rival clans such as the Hiki and the Wada. His son Yoriie was murdered in 1204, and another son, the poet-shogun Sanetomo, was assassinated in 1219 by his nephew Kugyō beside a giant ginkgo tree at the Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine. From then on the shoguns were figureheads and the Hōjō regents ruled. Under them the city gained many of its most prestigious religious foundations, among them Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji, Jufuku-ji and Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū. During the Mongol invasions of Japan, envoys from the Mongols were beheaded at Tatsunokuchi on the edge of the city. One modern estimate puts its population around 1250 at 200,000. A severe earthquake in 1293 is said to have killed 23,000 people.

In July 1333 the imperial loyalist Nitta Yoshisada, unable to force the passes through the hills, waited for low tide, led his troops around the Inamuragasaki headland and took the city. Accounts say almost 900 Hōjō warriors, including the last three regents, killed themselves at their family temple, Tōshō-ji; the city was sacked and many temples burned. Excavations in 1953 near the beach found 556 skeletons of people who had died violently in that period.

Under the Ashikaga shogunate, which ruled from Kyoto, Kamakura became the seat of the Kantō governors, Ashikaga relatives who repeatedly challenged the Kyoto shoguns. After the last of them was driven out by force in 1454, the city declined during the civil wars of the Sengoku period; it was largely burned in 1526, and many residents moved to Odawara. When the Tokugawa shogunate made nearby Edo the centre of government in 1603, Kamakura sank back into a fishing village, though its shrines and temples drew sightseers from Edo.

The anti-Buddhist violence that followed the government's separation of Shinto and Buddhism in 1868 damaged many temples, and Tsurugaoka Hachimangū had to give up its Buddhist buildings and images. The railway arrived in 1890, bringing tourists and new residents, and its beach and historic name made Kamakura a popular destination. The Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, centred beneath Sagami Bay, raised a tsunami over seven metres high, killed more than 2,000 people in the area and destroyed much of what remained of the old buildings. Many monuments have since been restored. Kamakura received city status in 1939 and now has about 170,000 inhabitants; the city has put forward its historic sites for World Heritage listing, and it remains one of the most visited historic towns in Japan.