Minamoto no Yoritomo

Minamoto no Yoritomo led his warrior clan to victory over the rival Taira in the civil war of 1180 to 1185 and then founded the Kamakura shogunate, the first military government in Japan. Ruling from his base at Kamakura in the east while the emperor's court in Kyoto kept its ceremonial role, he opened a long era in which warrior governments held real power in Japan.

Yoritomo was born in 1147 at Atsuta, in Owari Province, the third son of Minamoto no Yoshitomo; his mother was the daughter of the high priest of the Atsuta Shrine. His father emerged as head of the Minamoto after the Hōgen Rebellion of 1156, but in the Heiji Rebellion of 1159 he joined a failed coup against the court and its Taira allies. Taira no Kiyomori crushed the rising, and Yoshitomo was betrayed and killed while fleeing. Because of their youth, Yoritomo and his younger brothers were spared. Yoritomo was banished to Izu Province, where he grew up under Taira-dominated rule and married Hōjō Masako, daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa, head of the Hōjō clan.

In 1180 Prince Mochihito, a son of the retired emperor Go-Shirakawa, called on the Minamoto to rise against the Taira. Yoritomo answered, beginning the Genpei War. His first battle, at Ishibashiyama that September, was a defeat, and he escaped to Awa, where he spent months raising a new army. He then made Kamakura his headquarters. While others fought, he used a lull in the war between 1181 and 1184 to build an administration there, and he worked to assert himself as rightful head of the clan against rival kinsmen, including his cousin Minamoto no Yoshinaka, who seized Kyoto in 1183.

Yoritomo largely stayed in Kamakura and left the fighting to his half-brothers Noriyori and Yoshitsune. On his orders, Yoshitsune killed Yoshinaka in early 1184, then beat the Taira at Ichi-no-Tani and Yashima. In 1185 the Taira were destroyed at the sea battle of Dan-no-ura. Yoritomo soon turned on Yoshitsune, who had accepted court honours without his permission and acted independently. Yoshitsune fled north to the Ōshū Fujiwara at Hiraizumi, and in 1189 their leader, under pressure from Yoritomo, attacked him and forced him to kill himself. That summer Yoritomo invaded the north himself and razed Hiraizumi.

From 1185 Yoritomo appointed his own constables (shugo) and land stewards (jitō) across the provinces, giving his vassals military, police and tax powers that bypassed the court's officials; many historians now date the shogunate from this step. After Go-Shirakawa died in 1192, Yoritomo was appointed sei-i tai shōgun, the title that gave the regime its name. His government at Kamakura, with its own chancellery, ruled Japan's warriors while the court in Kyoto was left with ceremony and ritual.

Yoritomo died in 1199, aged 51, in what accounts describe as an accident, shortly after taking Buddhist vows. His sons Yoriie and Sanetomo succeeded him in turn, but real power passed to his wife's family. Hōjō Tokimasa took the post of regent, or shikken, and the Hōjō dominated the shogunate until its fall in 1333. A stone pagoda in Kamakura, by tradition his grave, still stands.

Our 1200 map shows Japan the year after his death, under the warrior government he had founded at Kamakura.