HISTORY OF JAPAN LIBRARY

JAMES MURDOCH' HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINS

TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 AD

CHAPTER XIII.

YORITOMO AND HIS WORK.

IN the year 1590—about four centuries after the date with which we are now dealing—Hideyoshi, the greatest genius in the sphere of statesmanship and of practical action that Japan has ever produced, was pressing the leaguer of the doomed Hojo cooped up in their keep of Odawara. One day the illustrious parvenu thought fit to solace himself by an excursion to Kamakura, and to the Shrine of Hachiman at Tsurugaoka, which, founded by Yoriyoshi in 1073 at Yui-ga-hama, had been transported by Yoritomo to its present site, and made the tutelary miya of his house. Stroking the back of the image of Yoritomo enshrined there, the monkey-faced dwarf burst out: “You are my friend. You took all the power under Heaven (in Japan). You and I, only, have been able to do this; but you were of an illustrious family, and not like me, sprung from the tillers of the earth. My ultimate purpose is to conquer not only all that is under Heaven (Japan), but even China. What think you of that?”

Here we have the most interesting and instructive of all criticisms—the passing of judgement by one great man on the work of another. It is not perhaps so luminous as Napoleon’s appreciation of Turenne, when the Great Corsican, sitting after dinner surrounded by his marshals between the first and second battle of Dresden (1813), was drawn on by that consummate master of the art of war, Marmont, to speak on the paramount importance to a soldier of the careful study of past campaigns; but it is sufficient to indicate that the most original mind that has ever appeared in this Empire frankly took Yoritomo as the only model to whom obligations were to be acknowledged.

Hideyoshi’s assertion that Yoritomo “took all the power under Heaven” is substantially correct. Yoritomo was not, indeed, the first Japanese subject to accomplish this feat. Certain Fujiwara chiefs, such as Michinaga, had been all but omnipotent in the Councils of the Empire, while Taira Kiyomori’s word had more than once been more potent than any Imperial fiat. But Kiyomori had established his position by nothing more original than the traditional Fujiwara device of adroitly utilising his female offspring, and of appealing to the sword and riding rough-shod over all forms of legality when baulked in the attainment of his purposes by peaceable means. Yoritomo never showed any desire to become the father-in-law or the grandfather of the titular Sovereign of Japan, while it was ever his keenest concern to convince all men that he must be regarded as a loyal subject of the august line of the Sun­Goddess, and a devoted upholder of the constitutional law of the Empire. Possibly no single man has ever done so much as Yoritomo did, not merely to modify, but actually to revolutionise the policy of the country. And yet with all his far-reaching, but at the same time very unobtrusive administrative innovations, the Lord of Kamakura professed himself to be a strict conservative, a Pharisee of the Pharisee in the realm of constitutional use and wont. In the history of Europe his nearest analogue is perhaps to be found in the person of the Emperor Augustus, while Yoritomo’s device of employing Shugo, or High Constables, in the provinces, to supplement the activity of the Civilian Prefect appointed by the Kyoto Court, anticipates the Intendants of Louis XIV by a stretch of four centuries and a half! This High Constable assigned to most of the provinces was no new office; in the guise of Sotsuibushi, by which name Yoritomo’s appointees were indeed at first known, it had existed for centuries. The plain matter of fact is that the Lord of Kamakura instituted very few new offices; his innovations mainly consisted in utilising the traditional institutions of the Empire for new purposes. On the other hand, he abolished little or nothing. The Court of Kyoto still continued to have its Kwampaku, its Chancellor of the Empire, its Ministers of the Left and the Right, its Imperial Guards, with their Generals of the Left and of the Right, its Ministers and officials of the Eight Boards, and its Provincial Governors and other local officers. But the authority wielded by all these was insidiously but surely transferred to the occupants of the co-ordinate offices through which Yoritomo chose to work; and in due course of time, the old central administration of Kyoto found itself confronted with a euthanasia from sheer atrophy and inanition.

The Kwanto and its administration, as has been repeatedly said, always had constituted a serious problem to the Kyoto authorities. One of the most original things that Yoritomo did was to give this remote district a capital city of its own,—a city which was not only the metropolis of Eastern Japan, but a headquarters for the military caste. The supreme importance of this step can hardly be over-estimated. For Yoritomo to have stepped into the position formerly occupied by Taira Kiyomori in Kyoto would have been the easiest and simplest thing in the world; and this is doubtless what he would have done if he had been gifted with no greater measure of political sagacity than Kiyomori possessed. But in Kyoto, all social prestige went to effeminate civilian courtiers; to the Fujiwaras and others of the sangre azul, whose lives were generally one long round of elaborately decorous dissipation, of giving and assisting at sumptuous and luxurious functions, where childish and frivolous diversions and pastimes were taken with a seriousness passing belief. With such an example set by the highest in the Empire and its Councils ever before the eyes of the citizens, it is not difficult to infer what the general moral and social tone of the capital must have been, without any very deep delving into the wearisome details of the sumptuary legislation of the time. Stately mansions, elaborate equipages, fine clothes, polished manners, and proficiency in frivolous polite accomplishments,—such were among the objects for which the homage and admiration of the ordinary citizen of Kyoto were reserved. The country gentleman from the provinces was as a rule the possessor of none of these things; and virtually autocratic, as he was upon his own estate and among his followers and tenants, his pride was wont to be sorely ruffled by the scant measure of courtesy accorded him by the shop keepers of the gay metropolis. Such of the bushi as were drafted for their term of three years’ service in the Guards were often constrained to ape the airs and graces and frivolities of the curled darlings of the Court (who treated them at best with a pitying and contemptuous condescension) merely in order to secure a measure of popular consideration and respect. As has been pointed out, Kyoto became a veritable Capua for Kiyomori’s clansmen. In the luxurious capital, with its unworthy and effeminate ideals, the simple and strenuous life so necessary for the development and maintenance of the robust military virtues was impossible.

So much Yoritomo had no difficulty in grasping. But this was by no means the only consideration that constrained him to keep severely aloof from the capital. If he established himself there in person, he would lose much in prestige, for he would be outranked not by one, but by many; and he would be sure to come into collision with one or other of those factions which were continually appearing, disappearing, and re appearing among the courtiers. It had been the traditional policy of the Fujiwara and of the Cloistered Emperors to divide the Bushi, and to play off one great military chief against another. Should Yoritomo be constrained to cast in his lot with one of the contending Court factions, its rival would inevitably endeavour to find a counterpoise to him in the person of some other military magnate. At the best, if he established himself in Kyoto, he could hope to make himself supreme in the Empire only by adopting the primitive tactics of Kiyomori, and of riding rough-shod over all legal and constitutional precedents by the exercise of brute force. Now, this was the very last thing he wished to do,—an open and forcible breach with the past, and with all that had hitherto been use and wont in the Empire, was what the Lord of Kamakura showed himself, from first to last, most anxious to avoid. If any one ever successfully accomplished the supposed impossible feat of putting new wine into old bottles, it was Yoritomo of the Minamoto who did so.

At this date, be it observed, there was really only one great city in Japan, for the population of Nara, though not inconsiderable, was mainly ecclesiastical. What the population of the capital amounted to it is really hard to say; but all things considered it certainly must have exceeded 500,000; and possibly, including its fluctuating population, at times approached double that number. Kyoto was to Japan in those days far more than what London is to the British Islands at present. In 1190 Kyoto did not as a matter of fact contain one-sixth of the subjects of the Emperor of Japan. Hut on the other hand it counted at least ten times as great a population as its nearest rival urban community, the city of Nara, mainly tenanted by religieux. At this time, neither in Kyoto nor in Nara was the Bushi, or warrior class, of any importance. In Kyoto the civilian was supreme; in Nara, the priest. In Yoritomo’s new city of Kamakura, it was neither the civilian nor the priest, but the Bushi, or warrior, who bore authority. No blue-blooded civilian courtier exercised the least influence in the new metropolis of the East; while such authority as was wielded there by shaven-pated priests was moral, or ghostly, merely. As for merchants, and traders, and hucksters, while welcomed and protected, they were carefully regulated and supervised by officials of the military caste. In the new city of Kamakura, the Bushi had to give the pas to none. This nascent city of Kamakura was, with modifications, a veritable camp of the Guardians; only, a camp not “Without the Walls,” but actually more than 300 miles removed from the seat of the interests it was supposed to protect.

Under the surveillance of its two-sworded guardians this military camp on Sagami Bay easily became the second city in the Empire. That it at any time actually rivalled Kyoto in wealth, magnificence, and extent we cannot believe; while the assertion that it at one time numbered as many as 1,000,000 inhabitants must be summarily dismissed as a mere figment of the luxuriant imagination of writers who hold that to stop and think is no part of their business. At the very largest estimate, the site of Kamakura, much of which was unsuitable for building, covered considerably under 5,000 acres of superficies. The most densely populated County Borough in England in 1906 (West Ham), with an area of 4,683 acres, had no more than 302,000 inhabitants. Japanese indeed do huddle together more closely in their so-called rooms than Occidentals are wont to do; but then, on the other hand, the Japanese huddling is all done on the ground floor; for except in restaurants and brothels, upstairs quarters, at this date at least, were almost unknown in the Empire. Accordingly, all things considered, if at the heyday of its prosperity we allow a population of from 200,000 to 250,000 to the military camp of Kamakura—for such in effect it really was—we are treating it with a certain amount of liberality in the matter of figures. In the great earthquake of 1293, as many as 23,000 of its inhabitants are said to have perished, and this was probably about one-tenth of the total.

But it was neither in its extent nor its magnificence that the profound importance and significance of Kamakura lay. In the heyday of his power and glory Hideyoshi assiduously laid himself out to dazzle the popular imagination by the embellishment of the capital, the erection of magnificent palaces and massive strongholds, the rearing of sumptuous fanes and shrines, the giving of gorgeous pageants and elaborate entertainments. In all this he was certainly not imitating Yoritomo, who carefully saw to it that everything in Kamakura was ordered with the utmost simplicity, frugality, and restraint. It is true that Yoritomo lavished much care and attention upon the Shrine of Hachiman; that he founded some considerable fanes in his new city; and that he caused numerous temples and shrines in Kyoto and Nara, and throughout the Empire generally, to be rebuilt, or renovated. But all this was merely the outcome partly of sincere religious conviction, partly of well-thought-out policy. At this date the priesthood was a great power in the Empire; and one of Kiyomori’s cardinal mistakes had been the reckless contempt with which he had treated it. From first to last Yoritomo showed an extreme anxiety to conciliate it. The least complaint from temples about the truculence of military men was promptly and carefully attended to, and the delinquents sternly and severely punished. The time that Yoritomo and his consort Masako devoted to religious functions is almost incredible; possibly a full third of the records of the age is occupied with accounts of their visits to temples, and what not. We continually hear of such and such a fane or shrine being made to offer up prayers for the speedy capture of Yoshitsune, for Yoritomo's success in the field against Fujiwara Yasuhira, to avert impending mischief from comets and other similar portents, and so on, in monotonous and interminable succession. For his erection of huge fanes and costly shrines Hideyoshi had no such excuse. In his day the power of the priests had been thoroughly broken, and he had no need to exert himself to conciliate them; while, personally, he was a downright free-thinker, without the slightest belief either in Hotoke or Kami, the latter of whose ranks he proposed himself to enter as the New Hachiman. In many of his gigantic undertakings the Taiko was actuated to a great extent by a vainglorious desire to transmit his name to posterity as that of one whose achievements had been unique, surpassing those of all predecessors, unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Yoritomo cherished no such ambition. His dominant passion was the passion for power; but he had the self­restraint to satisfy himself with the possession of the real substance, caring but little for pomp or display of any kind. And yet, on those very rare occasions when there was any useful purpose to be served by a display of pomp and magnificence, the Lord of Kamakura, as will appear presently, could show himself a past-master in the organisation of those processions and pageants and fetes in which Nobunaga, and still more Hideyoshi, delighted.

Although virtually autocratic on their own manors, and powerful in their own localities, the military men down to the time of Taira Kiyomori had counted for almost absolutely nothing in the Councils of the Empire. During the twenty years’ ascendancy of the Ise Heishi, Kiyomori’s clansmen had to a great extent accepted the ideals of their civilian rivals, and had given mortal offence to the military caste at large by the arrogance of their pretensions and the insolence of their demeanour. Between the favoured Ise Heishi and the Buké at large, armed strife was sure to follow; and the civilian courtiers would infallibly endeavour to profit by any such occasion, and do their best to reduce the warrior to his original position of insignificance. On the other hand, firmly united under one great chief of their own, drilled and disciplined according to their own distinctive ethical code, held fast to those ideals of their own which had been evolving during successive generations, the Bake could certainly aspire to constitute themselves into an imperium in imperio of their own, and, possibly, even to give the law to the Empire at large. But to accomplish this much, the first and indispensable requisite was that there must be absolutely no factions and no dissensions among them. So much Yoritomo had early discerned; and hence his strenuous endeavour to prevent any of his own vassals, or indeed any military man at large, from having direct communication with the Court of Kyoto. Hence, too, in a great measure, his intense jealousy and hatred of Yoshitsune, who was undoubtedly in high favour with the Cloistered Emperor Shirakawa II., and whose military genius, if placed at the disposal of the civilian Kyoto authorities, who were showing themselves more and more distrustful of Yoritomo, might very well bring his elder half­brother and all his projects to premature wreck and ruin.

After his abortive visit to Kamakura, in the summer of 1185, Yoshitsune had returned to Kyoto in no very pleasant frame of mind. Shortly afterwards Yoritomo induced the Court to reward some of his adherents who had rendered meritorious service; but Yoshitsune still found himself studiously passed over. At last, in September, when six Minamoto clansmen were made Governors of as many provinces, Yoshitsune, as one of them, was (barged with the administration of Iyo. But Yoritomo promptly sent Jito, or stewards, of his own to deal with all the numerous manors in that province, and made other arrangements there, which reduced the power of the new Governor to a mere nullity.

Just at this juncture, Uncle Yukiiye thought fit to reappear on the scene. After his defeat by the Tairas, two years before, he had gone into hiding and kept there, for he was well aware that if he fell into the power of his nephew, the Lord of Kamakura, he would get but short shrift after the dire offence he had given in that quarter. With Yoshitsune, Uncle Yukiive got on far better than he had done with either Yoritomo or Yoshinaka; in fact, the two seem to have been sincerely attached to each other. On hearing of their intimacy Yoritomo was profoundly incensed; one emissary was dispatched to seize Yukiiye and kill him, while the son of Kajiwara Kagetoki was sent to Kyoto to commission Yoshitsune to do the same. Yoshitsune was under medical treatment at the time, and therefore begged to be excused from meeting his brother’s envoy; and upon the latter’s return to Kamakura, his father, the old Kajiwara, sedulously and strenuously exerted himself to induce Yoritomo to put the very worst construction upon the incident.

It was presently determined, in the councils of Kamakura, that Yoshitsune must be “removed,”—in plain language, assassinated. But among the assembled vassals no one showed any great eagerness to undertake the mission, for all felt that the venture was a very desperate one. At last the ex-priest Tosabo Shoshun excited the admiration of all by coming forward and offering to proceed on the mission. He was careful enough to stipulate that his family must be provided for beforehand; and Yoritomo at once bestowed two manors upon his heirs. On November 2nd, 1185, Shoshun left Kamakura with 83 cavaliers. They must have marched well, for it was on the evening of November 10th that sixty of them delivered an assault upon Yoshitsune in his Kyoto mansion. Before this. Shoshun had had an interview with his prospective victim, who, suspecting sinister purposes, had made his visitor swear by all that he held most solemn that his intentions were at once pacific and friendly. The night-attack of November 10 was an utter failure; with but only seven attendants Yoshitsune kept the whole troop at bay, until Uncle Yukiiye in the adjoining ward, hearing the shouts and clamour, gallantly hastened out with a few retainers, fell upon the rear and flanks of the assailants, and cut most of them to pieces. A few days later Shoshun and some of his surviving followers were captured lurking in the suburbs of the capital, and their heads were promptly sent to grace the public pillories.

Naturally enough, Yoshitsune felt that this was altogether a little too much to be borne with patience; and Uncle Yukiiye, who on this occasion undoubtedly saved his youngest nephew’s life, had nothing to say against the correctness of this view of the situation. Yoshitsune laid the facts of the case before the Cloistered Emperor, and asked for a commission to chastise the Lord of Kamakura for the crime of outraging the lieges by military violence. The request occasioned many Cabinet councils and much discussion; but when Yoshitsune at last gave the civilians to understand that in default of any such commission as he had humbly asked for, he would simply carry off the Emperor, and the ex-Emperor with him, into the West until he could muster forces there to make headway with, a commission to punish Yoritomo for his misdeeds was promptly issued to Yoshitsune and Uncle Yukiiye, of the Minamoto. Intelligence of this was conveyed to Kamakura by relays of fleet-footed couriers with extraordinary promptitude. The dispatch was handed to Yoritomo while he was arranging the details of the solemn dedicatory ceremonies of one of the principal fanes of Kamakura. He looked over it leisurely, put it away, and went on with the work in which he was engaged, as if the communication from Kyoto was of no earthly importance whatsoever. And yet a calm and sober perusal of the subsequent records conclusively demonstrates that this dispatch was regarded by Yoritomo as among the most weighty and fateful that he ever received.

It seems that from first to last Yoritomo feared no more than five men; and these were that Taira Hirotsune who joined him at the Sumida River in 1180 with 20,000 troops, and whom he did to death shortly afterwards, Satake Hideyoshi, whom he eventually conciliated, Fujiwara Hidehira, the Lord of the 30,000 square miles of Mutsu and Dewa, his own cousin, the brilliant Morning-Sun Shogun, Yoshinaka from Kiso, and his own youngest half-brother Yoshitsune. Of the real inherent rottenness of the Taira domination, Yoritomo seems to have been well apprised long before he reared the flag of revolt on Stone-Bridge Hill in 1180; and his ultimate triumph over the effeminate and generally detested Ise Heishi he regarded as assured from the very beginning of the struggle. Of his treatment of Taira Hirotsune he professed to repent in sackcloth and ashes; Satake Hideyoshi, by his loyal co-operation in the great Mutsu campaign of 1189, disarmed all suspicions effectually; Kiso Yoshinaka had paved the way to his own undoing in the autumn of 1184. From 1185 to 1189, Yoritomo’s great objects of dread were his own half-brother Yoshitsune, and Fujiwara Hidehira of Mutsu. And of these twain it was the brilliant Yoshitsune, who although with scarce a score of devoted henchmen, and a proscribed fugitive with a great price set upon his head, that was the chief cause of the sleepless nights of the great Lord of Kamakura.

As a matter of fact, however, neither Yukiiye nor Yoshitsune was in a position to make any head against Yoritomo. Uncle Yukiiye was notorious as the best beaten and most consistently thrashed general-officer of the time; besides a score or so of immediate followers of his own he had no resources whatever. His very name was regarded as synonymous with ill luck; and the average samurai was unwilling to take service under him at any price. Yoshitsune’s, on the other hand, might well have been regarded as a name to conjure with, for victory had invariably sat perched upon his banner. But all his triumphs had been won if not as Yoritomo’s lieutenant, at all events with Yoritomo’s troops; and after Dan-no-ura Yoritomo had given his vassals to understand that if they wished to enjoy his favour they must have but few dealings with Yoshitsune. Hence at this juncture they all held aloof. Yoshitsune could indeed trust implicitly in his own personal following; but it was insignificant in numbers, since he had never possessed more than a score of not very extensive manors, and of these he had been stripped by his brother a few months before. His attempt to muster troops in the neighbourhood of the capital proved a failure, for it quickly leaked out that his commission to chastise Yoritomo had been to a great extent extorted by the threat of carrying off the Sovereign and the Cloistered Emperor to the West. Shirakawa II and the courtiers were exceedingly anxious to have no more fighting in Kyoto; and so, when Yoshitsune spoke of retiring to the West to muster powers there, he was at once granted the taxes of the Sanyodo and Kyushu for military purposes, while he himself was appointed Jito of Kyushu, and Yukiiye Jito of Shikoku, each severally armed with instructions to summon the samurai of these quarters to their standard.

On November 26, Yoshitsune and Yukiiye left Kyoto at the head of no more than 200 men. Before they reached the coast of Settsu, where they were to take ship, they had to fight two actions with some vassals of Yoritomo who made a strenuous effort to bar their way and cut them off. Just as they put to sea on November 29, they encountered the full force of a terrible typhoon; and their flotilla was utterly broken up and dispersed. At first it was reported, and generally believed, that all on board of it had perished. But both Yoshitsune and Yukiiye had escaped with their lives, although the one knew nothing of the other’s fate; and Yoshitsune, landing at Tennoji with his spouse, Shizuka Gozen, the everfaithful Benkei and a few other attendants, made his way through Izumi into Yamato and went into hiding in the wilds of Yoshino.

Meanwhile Yoritomo had mobilised his vassals in the Tokaido, Tosando, and Hokurikudo and had launched them against Kyoto in three great converging columns. A little later he took the held in person and advanced as far as the Kisegawa in Suruga, where lie stopped to await developments. Kyoto, of course, was occupied without striking a blow; and thereupon a counter-decree was promptly issued, charging Yoritomo with the duty of arresting and punishing Yoshitsune and Yukiiye.

It was at this point that Yoritomo got Imperial sanction for introducing one of the most important of his great, but unobtrusive, innovations into the administration of the Empire. He was exceedingly anxious about the possibility of Yoshitsune escaping into Kyushu, and there ultimately arraying the West against the East; and on returning to Kamakura he held many consultations with his advisers as to the most effective means of providing against the contingency. It was the long-headed Nakahira Hiromoto who propounded the best solution of this problem; and the adoption of the measure he then proposed not only served to render Yoshitsune impotent, but also to rivet the shackles of the Bakufu upon the Empire at large. Nakahara’s scheme was that Imperial sanction should be obtained by Yoritomo for placing a High Constable (Sotsuibushi, or Shugo) in every province, while Jito (Land Stewards) should be appointed to superintend the administration of justice, the maintenance of order, and the collection of taxes in all the manors of the Empire, irrespective of their holders, whether military men or civilians, and of the particular tenure by which they were held. Furthermore, on all these manors the new Land Stewards were to levy a new tax of 5 sho of rice per tan (roughly equal to one bushel per acre) for purely military purposes,—to be devoted to the support of the men drafted for service in the Imperial Guards or levied for the suppression of disturbances.

To obviate certain serious misconceptions, a somewhat detailed discussion of this dry subject may be found necessary and beneficial. The administrative system or systems of Old Japan are often regarded as wonderfully symmetrical and simple. But symmetry and simplicity, on closer examination, will be found to be equally illusory. The attempt to adapt a symmetrical series of governmental institutions from China was never more than a partial success at best; and since the eighth century the actual policy of the nation had been developing with all the irregularity of the famous British Constitution. Thus it is possible to indulge in the luxury of universal propositions about the administrative institutions of Old Japan and their practical working only at the expense of the best interests of accuracy and veracity.

We are generally told by non-Japanese writers that Yoritomo on this occasion appointed and stationed a High Constable in each of the six-and-sixty provinces of the Empire. But he did nothing of the kind. He indeed did obtain the sanction of the Court to do so. But he simply could not dare at this date to presume to intrude any such functionaries into the huge provinces of Mutsu and Dewa, where the will of Fujiwara Hidehira was virtually omnipotent. Over some provinces such as Noto and Hyuga he contented himself with placing merely a Jito or Land Steward. In others, notably Bungo and some of the Kwanto provinces, he established Kuni Bugyo. In others again, such as Yamato, there was no High Constable at all, the Shugo established in the capital being supposed to keep a watchful eye upon it and the other Home Provinces in the case of any necessity to do so. In some cases, such as that of Satsuma, the Shugo appointed did not proceed to occupy his post until years afterwards. Especially misleading is such a statement as that at this time “Doi Sanehira received five provinces of the Sanyodo in fief.” Doi was simply made High Constable in these provinces,—a mere administrative functionary, with strictly limited duties, and no proprietary rights over the soil whatsoever. A few manors in them may have been assigned to him for the support of his position in the discharge of his functions; but as to his receiving that huge tract of country as a “ fief ” at this date, the statement is a glaring anachronism. That there were“ fiefs ” at this time is perfectly true; but in one celebrated document Yoritomo speaks of 500 acres of rice-land as a very large holding for a military man to possess. Upon the overthrow of the Tairas, the only great feudatories in Japan, besides Yoritomo, were Fujiwara Hidehira, Satake Hideyoshi, and certain Buddhist monasteries. In short, to confound the position of one of Yoritomo’s Shugo with that of one of Hideyoshi’s Daimyo, four hundred years later on, is a huge historical blunder.

Hideyoshi’s Daimyo had proprietary rights, the all but unlimited rights of administration in their fiefs, the power of legislation for their vassals, tenants, and thralls, and also the power of life and death over every one on their estates, and of adjudicating either in person or by deputy all suits, criminal and civil, within their domains. Furthermore, their position was supposed to be hereditary,—one transmitted from sire to son, or from the holder to his lawful heir. It is perfectly true that not a few of Hideyoshi’s Daimyo were the direct lineal descendants of certain of Yoritomo’s High Constables, or of the most considerable of his Jito or Land Stewards. However, in order to convey some approximate idea of the huge gap that has to be bridged in the evolution of a Kamakura High Constable of Coeur-de-Lion’s time into a Daimyo coeval with the Elizabethan age in England, it may be sufficient to cite a locus classicus from Mr. John Carey Hall’s excellent translation of the first attempt at a Feudal Code in Japan— the famous Joci Shikimoku of 1232.

“Article 3.—Of the duties devolving upon High Constables. In the time of Yoritomo it was settled that those duties should be the calling out and dispatching the Grand Guard for service at the capital, the suppression of conspiracies and rebellion, and the punishment of murder and violence [which included night attacks on houses, robbery, dacoity, and piracy]. Of late years, however, Official Substitutes (Daikwan) have been taken on and distributed over the counties and townships and these have been imposing burdens (corvée) on the villages. Not being Governors of the Provinces (still, in theory, civilians appointed by the Kyoto Court), they yet hinder the (agricultural) work of the province; not being Land Stewards they are yet greedy of the profits of the land. Such proceedings and schemes are utterly unprincipled ... In short, conformably 1o the precedents of the time of Yoritomo, the High Constables must cease altogether from giving directions in matters outside of the hurrying-up of the Grand Guards and the suppression of plots, rebellion, murder, and violence ... In the event of a High Constable disobeying this article and intermeddling in other affairs than those herein named, if a complaint is instituted against him by the (civilian) Governor of the Province (appointed by the Emperor), or the Lord of a Manor, or if the Land Steward (Jito) or the folk aggrieved petition for redress, his downright lawlessness being thus brought to light, he shall be divested of his office, and a person of mild character appointed in his stead. Again, as regards Delegates (Daiktwan), not more than one is to be appointed by a High Constable.

“Article 4—Of High Constables omitting to report cases of crime (to Kamakura) and confiscating the succession to fiefs, on account of offences. When persons are found committing serious offences the High Constables should make a detailed report of the case (to Kamakura) and follow such directions as may be given them in relation thereto; yet there are some who, without ascertaining the truth or falsehood of an accusation, or investigating whether the offence committed was serious or trifling, arbitrarily pronounce the escheat of the criminal’s hereditaments, and selfishly cause them to be confiscated. Such unjust judgements are a nefarious artifice for the indulgence of licence. Let a report be promptly made to us of the circumstances of each case and our decision upon the matter be respectfully asked for; any further persistence in transgression of this kind will be dealt with criminally.

“In the next place, with regard to a culprit’s rice-fields and ether fields, his dwelling-house, his wife and children, his utensils and other articles of property. Tn serious cases, the offenders are to be taken in charge by the Protector’s office; but it is not necessary to take in charge their farms, houses, wives, children, and miscellaneous gear along with them.

“Furthermore, even if the criminal should in his statement implicate others as being accomplices or accessories, such are not to be included in the scope of the High Constable’s judgement, unless they are found in possession of the booty (or other substantial evidence of guilt be forthcoming).”

As for the Jito or Land Stewards, a good deal has already been said in previous chapters when dealing with the important question of manors. We have spoken of these manors as being tax-free; but the peasants and farmers settled on them were by no manner of means tax-free. Only their taxes were paid not to the Imperial revenue officer but to the proprietor of the estate. The Jito at this date was not a proprietor; in theory he was simply an administrative officer appointed by the proprietor to represent him, to collect the dues, and to manage the property. But there was a strong and increasing tendency for Jito to art as if they were proprietors. During the supremacy of the Ise Heishi, many of the largest owners of Sho-en had been constrained by force of circumstances to appoint men of Taira stock as their Jito. On the overthrow of the Tairas not only were all their own manors confiscated; wherever a Taira had held a Land Stewardship, this office was also declared to be forfeit. These manors and these offices were at first bestowed partly on Yoritomo and partly on Yoshinaka; on the death of the latter they all went to Yoritomo, who at once filled the vacant posts with his own vassals. What was now done in 1185. was to deprive the proprietors of Sho-en of the right of appointing their own Land Stewards (Jito), and to transfer that right to the Lord of Kamakura. His Jito, after deducting their own salaries, were to hand over the produce of the taxes to the proprietors, whoever they might be; to administer justice, and be generally responsible for the maintenance of peace and order within the bounds of the estates committed to their charge. Some of the Jito of Yoritomo were responsible not for one manor, but for many; as Jito, Hasebe ruled the greater part of manorial Noto, Ito the whole of manorial Hyuga, while about one-half of manorial Hizen was under the superintendence of the Jito of Ryuzoji.

Outside the manorial tracts lying in his province, the Provincial Governor was still supposed to be supreme. Theoretically this official was a civilian appointed by the Court of Kyoto, to whom alone he was directly responsible. As a matter of fact, even at this date, we meet with not a few instances of military men appointed to this civilian post. In times of commotion and strife, the Provincial Governor would naturally find himself helpless, for he had no military force at his disposal. The control of that had passed into the hands of Shugo and Jito; and these bent not to the will of Kyoto, but to the behests of Kamakura. The Court could not interfere directly with either High Constable or Land Steward. If complaints about these were received, they were forwarded to Yoritomo, who alone could decide as to their reasonableness, and who alone could take practical action in the matter. In reality, he showed himself wonderfully attentive to the incessant reports of misconduct with which he was assailed, and very prompt to redress grievances and to punish offending subordinates. In a few months, however, he realised that he had carried his Jito project too far; the troubles between his appointees and the owners were numerous and serious; and the new system was undoubtedly most unpopular in certain quarters. Now, at this time, what Yoritomo desired above all things was popularity, he had caused the Kirokusho established by Sanjo II in 1069 to be re-organised for the purpose of dealing with civil suits between owners of Sho-en, and of owners of Sho-en and the Jito; but its commissioners proved to be dilatory and timid, and its working was the reverse of satisfactory. In a few months, he asked leave to abolish the special military tax of four bushels of rice per acre; and soon afterwards he withdrew his Land Stewards from nearly all the manors, except those that had been either owned by the Tairas, or administered by them. He could the more readily afford to make this concession, since these Taira manors in Western Japan were so numerous and so extensive, that his possession of them practically ensured his supremacy there, while at the same time his Shugo had complete control of the military affairs of the provinces in which they lay.

Shortly after the Kamakura troops had occupied Kyoto towards the end of 1185, Hojo Tokimasa had been sent up to the capital to represent Yoritomo there; and it was during his three months’ stay at the seat of the Court that all these new arrangements were effected. But all this was only part of his commission. On three separate occasions Yoritomo had been publicly proclaimed a rebel by the Court; and he was determined that his fortunes and fair fame should not be any longer exposed to the caprices of the ex-Emperor and his factious advisers. Certain of the functions of the Kwampaku were now entrusted to a Nairan,—an officer who was really to watch the doings of the Kyoto authorities in Yoritomo’s interests, and to keep him duly apprised of what was toward in the capital. Furthermore, a Shugo, or High Constable, was stationed in Kyoto, with the duty of attending to the neighbouring provinces in case of need. In many respects the functions of Ibis official were identical with those of the Kebiishi, the High Commissioner of Polite and Criminal Law, appointed by the Sovereign. But the Shugo was not supposed to displace the Kebiishi. In fact, shortly afterwards we read Of the Kebiishi putting some Bakufu men under arrest for negligence in the discharge of their duties, and of Yoritomo punishing the latter severely when the incident was brought to his notice. The truth is that what with orders and decrees emanating from so many different sources,—the Imperial Chancery, the Palace of the Cloistered Emperor, the Kebiishi Board,—and all of equal authority, concurrent jurisdiction had become the rule rather than the exception in the administration of the capital and of the Empire. Hence this invasion of the traditional sphere of the activity of the Kebiishi by Kamakura officers did not occasion any particular surprise or uneasiness in Kyoto at first. As a matter of fact, the Court continued to appoint its own Kebiishi without any reference to Kamakura, for long years after this. But in little more than a generation after the Bakufu established its first pied à terre in Kyoto, in 1186, the once all powerful Kebiishi had come to be little more than an empty titular distinction, for by that time the Hojo Regents had got their hands so securely upon the throat of the Court, that by tightening their grip they could virtually strangle it with all its officials at any moment. But it was no part of the policy of Yoritomo to offend the susceptibilities of the Cloistered Emperor in any way, when such a course could be avoided; and he was extremely careful to see to it that his officials in the capital should be as unobtrusive as possible in all the steps they took for the establishment of Kamakura influence there.

During the next three years—1186 to 1189—the Lord of Kamakura was mostly occupied with two problems, which ultimately resolved themselves into one. In the summer of 1186, Uncle Yukiiye had been at last captured in Izumi; and his head after being exposed in Kyoto was sent on to Kamakura for Yoritomo’s inspection. But Yoshitsune still continued to be at large; and so long as his head and shoulders remained undivorced this most brilliant of all the Great Captains of Japan was regarded by Yoritomo as the direst of menaces to himself and his projects. And then, to the north lay the vast estates and thronging vassals of Fujiwara Hidehira, the Lord, or rather the King, of the 30,090 square miles of Mutsu and Dewa. Until Yoshitsune was safely and securely under the mould, and Mutsu and Dewa reduced to subjection, Yoritomo felt that he could not hope to sleep in peace.

The anxiety felt by the Lord of Kamakura about what his youngest half-brother wight possibly do was plainly not only intense, but actually overmastering and overpowering. A rich harvest to priests and temples it proved; for, with all his greatness, Yoritomo was the abject slave of superstition,—as much so, indeed, as was Louis XI of France. In 1186, Yoshitsune’s spouse, or better perhaps, devoted female friend and companion, Shizuka Gozen, was captured by Hojo Tokimasa’s emissaries. After being subjected to a rigorous but unsatisfactory examination by Hojo she was sent on to Kamakura,— pregnant with child by Yoshitsune. Shizuka was the ablest and most fashionable danseuse in Kyoto; the brilliant victor in the great Dan-no-ura fight of 1185 had at once captivated her heart, when, summoned to perform in a function given in his honour, she had first met him. Henceforth her devotion to him had been at once sincere and profound; henceforth she incontestably proved herself to be

“ Bold, cautious, true, and his loving comrade.”

Had it not been for the loving and anxious forethought of Shizuka, Yoshitsune must inevitably have fallen a victim to the assault of the vile and foresworn Toshabo Shoshun, the miserable tool of the still viler Lord of Kamakura, who employed his dirty services and rewarded them liberally in advance. In this connection, a fearless and impartial historian has not the slightest need to stop and pause and consider and mime his words. In spite of all his great intellectual and administrative abilities, Yoritomo was morally as great a criminal as were Richelieu or Colbert, when what he, or they, were pleased to consider as “reasons of State” were involved. On arriving at Kamakura, Shizuka was subjected to another searching examination; but as to the whereabouts or the probable whereabouts of the much-dreaded Yoshitsune the inquisitors learned simply nothing. Then nothing would serve Masako but that the famous danseuse should give an exhibition of her skill before her. Shizuka flatly refused to do so; but at last Yoritomo found means to induce her to comply with the mandate. Accompanied by Hatakeyama Shigetada with the cymbals and Kudo Suketsune with the tambourine, she danced, improvising a song of love and regret for her proscribed lover. Masako, in this, did not come off with any very great advantage; certain of the deft allusions in the bold improvisation slung too keenly. Shizuka was kept in ward till she was delivered of her child. It was a male! and Yoritomo at once ordered one of his satellites (Adachi Kiyotsune) to make away with it, while the mother was set at liberty. It will be remembered that Kiso Yoshinaka’s boyish son had been sent to Kamakura to be wedded to Yoritomo’s daughter. Shortly after the fall of Yoshinaka, Yoritomo had this boy put to death in cold blood. It is things of this description that excite our detestation and loathing for certain phases of Yoritomo’s character. What makes the matter infinitely worse is that it was towards those of his own flesh and blood,—towards his own kith and kin,—that the great Lord of Kamakura was so unrelentingly pitiless and cruel.

On the other hand, towards the hereditary enemies of his house,—the Ise Heishi,—he was not particularly vindictive, if we take into account the manifold causes for a just resentment they had furnished. Part of Hojo Tokimasa’s commission, on going up to Kyoto, at the end of 1185, had been to search for the remnants of the Tairas still lurking in the capital; to see to it that most of those found should be sent into a safe exile; and that the more dangerous among them should be killed. Yet we read of no more than two of the infant descendants of Kiyomori being butchered on this occasion. However, there is some reason to believe that this unwonted measure of clemency must be attributed to nothing loftier than a grovelling superstition. In the autumn of 1185, Kyoto had been visited by a series of terrible earthquakes which had done immense damage, and the surface of the ground had kept on shaking and quivering for weeks. To the excited popular imagination it seemed as if the ghosts of the Taira host that had got whelmed in the waves at Dan-no-ura, and so defrauded of last obsequies, were now wreaking a deadly revenge, from which the sole prospect of escape lay in appeasing the wrath of the offended disembodied spirits. That this view of the matter was transmitted to Kamakura by Hojo, we know from contemporary records. Now, as has been said, Yoritomo was profoundly superstitious; and the popular desire to placate the “rough spirits” of the drowned Heishi, no doubt, did much to stay him from pushing matters against the scant survivors of the erstwhile all-powerful house of Kiyomori to extremities. Besides all this, the Ise Heishi had been so effectually and thoroughly crushed, that long generations must pass before they could again become formidable. They had almost entirely ceased to be objects of anxiety to the Lord of Kamakura. What occupied his thoughts night and day was what the man who had done most to bring about their fall—his own youngest half-brother, Yoshitsune—might be ultimately able to effect against him.

Down to March or April 1187,—for fifteen months,—Yoshitsune succeeded in eluding the Kamakura sleuth-hounds in the wilds of Yamato, Kishu, and Ise. During a portion of this time he actually contrived to lurk in Kyoto, or its vicinity. Then at last, disguised as a Yama-bushi, or strolling begging Friar, accompanied by Benkei and others, he struck out for the coast of the Sea of Japan, and after a series of thrilling adventures in traversing its littoral towards the north, he at last found himself once more safe under the protector of his youthful days, Fujiwara Hidehira, the virtual King of Mutsu and Dewa. At this time Hidehira was an old man of ninety- one, and he knew that his end was at hand. One of the last things he did was to charge his sons to stand by Yoshitsune on all occasions to the last, and to exert themselves to aid him to obtain the office of Shogun. A few months after Yoshitsune arrived in Mutsu, the patriarchal Hidehira was gathered to his fathers; and his eldest son, Yasuhira, ruled in his stead. By-and-by rumours began to reach Kamakura to the effect that Yoshitsune was being harboured in Mutsu; and when the truth of these rumours was presently confirmed emissaries were dispatched requesting Yasuhira to put the fugitive to death (April 1188). As little notice was taken of this request, Yoritomo began to put pressure on the Cloistered Emperor to send a special decree to Yasuhira enjoining him to carry out the order from Kamakura; and when, even then, the Mutsu chieftain was slow to bestir himself, the Lord of Kamakura began to insist upon receiving a commission to chastise Yasuhira himself. It was with great reluctance that such a commission was at last issued by the Court of Kyoto, where, even then, Yoshitsune had strong and not altogether uninfluential sympathisers, some of whom weire presently banished for attempting to thwart Yoritomo’s projects. On learning of all this, Yasuhira lost heart, and resolved to endeavour to avert the storm threatening to burst upon him by executing the mandate from Kyoto. With overwhelming numbers he suddenly attacked Yoshitsune’s residence at Koromogawa, and although the latter made a most gallant defence he was ultimately overborne. Seeing that escape was impossible, he first killed his wife and children, and then committed hara-kiri. Hidehira’s youngest son, true to his father’s dying injunctions, had stood manfully by Yoshitsune to the last; and Yasuhira did not scruple to forward the head of his own brother together with that of Yoshitsune to Kamakura, with the view of still further placating the resentment of Yo-ri-tomo.

One authority alleges that “this barbarous action irritated Yoritomo to such a degree that he assembled a great army to punish Yasuhira for the crime, and although the Cloistered Emperor forbade him, he refused to listen to his commands.” Seeing that the Lord of Kamakura was notoriously guilty of similar barbarities on a much more extensive scale, it is not likely he was at all seriously or profoundly affected by the death of Fujiwara Tadahira at the hands of his elder brother. The lively indignation he expressed was doubtless entirely feigned,—simulated for “reasons of State.” What he wanted above all things was a plausible excuse for attacking Yasuhira and reducing Mutsu and Dewa to subjection. The fact is that when Yoshitsune’s death was reported to the Kyoto Court, Yoritomo’s commission for operations against Yasuhira was cancelled. But Yoritomo’s agents insisted that his preparations for the campaign were so far advanced that he could not afford to abandon it; and judicious pressure in the proper quarters occasioned the prompt re-issue of the decree for the reduction of Mutsu. Presently three huge armies were converging upon the doomed provinces from as many widely separated bases. While the levies of the Hokurikudo under Hiki and Usami entered Dewa by the Japan Sea coast route, two great columns advanced upon Mutsu from the south. One followed the Pacific sea-board, the other directed its course through Shimotsuke. With the latter of these Yoritomo went in person. When the three forces ultimately formed a junction in the centre of Mutsu, towards the end of the campaign, they were found to amount to the immense total of 284,000 men. At all events such is the assertion of the Azunta Kagami,—which must be admitted to be on  the whole a sober, unimaginative, and well-informed record.

The strategy of the Bakufu commanders was at once simple and sound, and the immense masses of men they had at their disposal were handled with no mean amount of tactical ability and skill. Before the overwhelming numerical superiority of the invaders the men of Mutsu could do little more than stand passively on the defensive. There was a good deal of dour and dogged and determined fighting, but the northerners were driven from one entrenched position to another, some of the most considerable of their stockades being captured with all their garrisons, and by the end of two months or so. it had become plain to Yasuhira that all hopes of a successful resistance were at an end. He therefore sent envoys to Yoritomo’s headquarters to negotiate terms of surrender. But the overture was brusquely repulsed; and it then became plain that Yoritomo would rest satisfied with nothing less than the death of Yasuhira, and the complete overthrow of the great house of Fujiwara of Mutsu. Yasuhira in despair abandoned the contest on the mainland, and fled over the straits to Yezo, where he was presently assassinated by one of his own retainers, a certain Kawada, who carried his master’s head to Yoritomo. No doubt the latter was deeply gratified in the innermost recesses of his heart by the sight of the grisly trophy; but he rewarded Kawada in a very characteristic fashion,—he at once ordered him to be put to death for treachery! Pulling the chestnuts out of the fire for the Lord of Kamakura was at all times a hazardous and unprofitable venture.

In the immense hoard of metallic and other treasures accumulated by the Fujiwaras of Mutsu in the course of three generations Yoritomo found a ready and easy means of recompensing the services of his officers; and all proffer of reward from the Court of Kyoto was respectfully declined. Presently, however, Yoritomo requested to be allowed to undertake the administration of the conquered provinces; and the petition was granted. For the preservation of order and the decision of suits, two officials, who soon came to exercise concurrent jurisdiction, were established in Mutsu, while later on a Shugo was specially assigned to Dewa. Their instructions were to conduct affairs as they had been conducted by Hidehira, a certain indication that the administration of that great chief was regarded by Yoritomo as at once highly efficient and a model worthy of imitation. At the same time everything possible was done to conciliate the good will of the new vassals of the Bakufu. Temples and shrines were repaired and renovated, their revenues confirmed and in certain cases considerably augmented, while special efforts were made to relieve destitution and distress. In a short time, after the vigorous suppression of an abortive revolt in the following year, when an adventurer endeavoured to personate Yoshitsune, the new provinces were as orderly and contented as they had been under the beneficent patriarchal rule of the illustrious Hidehira. And this was the end of the earliest great fief in Japan,—a fief which in territorial extent covered a full fourth of the total superficies of the Empire.

From the autumn of 1189, the Lord of Kamakura could afford to sleep soundly. In that year both Yoshitsune and the Fujiwara chieftain had perished; and instead of being a deadly menace to Yoritomo’s rear whenever he contemplated operations in the West, Mutsu and Dewa would henceforth supply him with the support of an additional 50,000 or 60,000 horse­bowmen or footmen in case of need. Of the five men who had at any time inspired Yoritomo, if not with mortal fear, at all events with wholesome dread, four could henceforth work him smith as disembodied spirits merely; and the Lord of Kamakura was, above all things, exceedingly careful to stand well with Buddhist priests and the heads of Shinto shrines. As for the erstwhile redoubtable Satake Hideyoshi, he had brought a strong following to join Yoritomo’s flag at Utsunomiya on September 7, 1189; and in the subsequent Mutsu campaign he had done yeoman’s service in the cause of the Kamakura Bakufu.

Here it may be well once more to insist upon a point—and a cardinal point too—which Western readers will infallibly overlook, unless it be insisted upon with almost nauseous and damnable iteration. Under the Tokugawa regime, the rights of the Great Daimyo over their territories were twofold,—proprietary as well as administrative, although, as a rule, these two very distinct and distinctive prerogatives were wont to be blended in blurred, if not actually inextricable confusion. Now in Mutsu and Dewa Yoritomo’s rights were not proprietary; they were administrative purely and solely, at least in their origin. But even with the clearest and cleanest of title-deeds of the very most superfine quality of parchment, it is but ill having to argue with an offended administrative authority, who can at an extreme pinch contrive to throw a matter of some 350,000 fully armed men upon your just but defenceless back. What the Lord of Kamakura filched, not from the Emperor, but from an ex-Emperor of Japan, most dutifully and with the most elaborate show, or simulation, of constitutional means and methods, was not provinces, or even acres or roods; but simply administrative rights and prerogatives over perhaps some eighty per cent, of the military caste, then rapidly increasing in influence, prestige, numbers, and material resources. Here another word of caution is imperatively necessary. The military caste had no monopoly of the use of lethal weapons of offence or defence at this time; or indeed for a full four hundred years afterwards. The very hucksters and pedlars, who humbly hawked their wares about from one door to another in the great Huke capital of Kamakura, from first to last carried a well-tempered keen-cutting blade in their girdles, and the records conclusively show that some of them at least did not carry that blade as a mere ornament.

Since he raised his standard on Stone-Bridge-Hill in 1180, Yoritomo had been, not once, but several times summoned to repair to Kyoto; but he had invariably been able to devise some excuse for his non-appearance there. This persistent aloofness on his part was no doubt the outcome of carefully studied and deeply pondered policy. The unknown, and still more, the mysterious unknown, readily passes for the magnificent; and as it was and had been the wont of the polished courtiers and of the citizens who took their tone from them to treat military men with a tolerant condescension at the best, the great War-Lord of Kamakura was in no haste to expose himself to the risks of that familiarity which so easily bred contempt. Time and again the people of Kyoto had seen the fierce Kwanto horse-bowmen defiling through their streets in all the stern panoply of war in seemingly interminable troops and squadrons; and these overwhelming displays of military power and resources began to impress even the incurable levity of the gay metro polis with an uncomfortable sense of awe and respect. Then followed the reflection that those huge masses of invincible warriors constituted an engine merely; and that behind it and far greater than it was the brain who had forged it, and who continued to control all its movements from the mysterious remoteness of the nascent capital of Kamakura, about whose magnificence strange fables were rapidly getting afloat in Kyoto. Again, latterly, the very palaces and fanes of Kyoto had one after the other been either rebuilt or renovated by the resources of the Kwanto, dutifully proffered by the great War-Lord for these beneficent objects. Then with his Shu go in Kyoto, with the Nairan looking after his interests amid the devious intrigues of the Court, it presently began to dawn upon the consciousness of Kyoto that the arm of the new War-Lord was at once long and powerful. In the Empire of Japan all this was entirely new and unprecedented. Since Kwammu founded his new metropolis of Heianjo in 794, Kyoto had continued to be the centre of the universe. Whoever aspired to play any considerable part in the councils of the nation had, since that date, inevitably endeavoured to be in, or near, the gay and frivolous capital. The highest ambition of great captains and of successful military adventurers had unfailingly hitherto been to participate in the gaieties of Kyoto, whether as humble satellites of Fujiwara magnates like Michinaga, or as the trusted henchmen of Cloistered Emperors. Taira Kiyomori had indeed so far broken with immemorial tradition, in this respect, as to endeavour, with no mean measure of success, to dispense with all patronage from civilians, and had boldly challenged their lofty pretensions to the monopoly of high office and exalted rank. Yet, like almost every great military chief before him, Kiyomori himself, and his clansmen in still greater measure, had succumbed to the siren-like enchantment of the magnificent and luxurious city on the banks of the Kamo. And now in these later years a War-Lord had arisen in the barbarous wilds of the East, far greater than Kiyomori had ever been, whose numerical following was such as was unknown in Japan in the very hey-day of Kiyomori’s power, a War-Lord who all unseen and unknown had forged an engine which had tumbled the huge structure of Ise Heishi grandeur and greatness into irrecoverable and irredeemable w reck and ruin. And yet to this War-Lord the brilliant centre of the Japanese universe was without interest or charm; time and again he had turned a deaf ear to the most flattering commands or invitations to honour it with the light of his countenance. All this could scarcely fail to impress the imagination of even the most giddy-minded among the courtiers and the citizens who aped them and their ways. Curiosity about the mysterious Lord of Kamakura had for long been intense; and when it was known that he had at last fixed a date for his appearance in their midst the whole city was in a turmoil of excitement and expectation.

In August, 1190, architects and artificers were busily at work rearing a magnificent hostel for the reception of Yoritomo during his sojourn in Kyoto, on the site of Taira Kiyomori’s Rokuhara mansion. When news reached Kamakura that this structure was all but completed Yoritomo set out, on November 2, escorted by a numerous and magnificent cavalcade. Nearly five weeks were spent on the journey, for Yoritomo, besides looking carefully into the conduct of his administrative agents along the route, devoted considerable time to revisiting the scenes made memorable by the hardships he had endured as a boy of fourteen during the disastrous flight from Kyoto thirty years before. At last, on December 5, his cortege arrived in the suburbs of the capital; and through long lines and lanes of gaping citizens it wended its way to the Rokuhara. So overwhelming was the curiosity of the Cloistered Emperor that his ex-Majesty is said to have gone out incognito to view his formidable subject and his magnificent train, whose splendour astonished even the oldest courtiers, accustomed as they had been to pomp and pageants from their youth. They could scarcely believe that such wealth and such knowledge of the art of display were to be found in the Kwanto. During his five weeks’ stay in Kyoto on this occasion, Yoritomo rained costly gifts and presents upon the Sovereign, the Cloistered Emperor, the courtiers, and the leading fanes and shrines of the city.

Yoritomo was already invested with very high Court rank; about two years before this date he had been advanced to the first grade of the Second Class. But hitherto he had held none of the ordinary great Court offices. He was now made Gon- Dainagon, or Acting Councillor of State,— the Dainagon (of whom there were several), it will be remembered, ranking after the Minister of the Right or the Naidaijin, when there was a Naidaijin. A few days later, he was gazetted Great General of the Right, and accorded the privilege of wearing a sword of honour when he appeared at Court, As propriety demanded, he had at first declined both offices; but they were pressed upon him. However, he held them for no more than a few days, his resignation being graciously accepted when he presented it. It is strange to read of Yoritomo being rewarded on this occasion with a gift of 250 acres of Koden (Merit-Land) for his distinguished services.

This visit to the capital did not enable Yoritomo to attain the object on which he had set his mind for long. He had for years been desirous of obtaining an Imperial patent investing him with the office of Sei-i-Tai Shogun (Barbarian-Subduing Great General). But the Cloistered Emperor looked askance at the request; and was careful not to grant it. The fact is, that in spite of Yoritomo’s professed dutiful submission, his obtaining Court decrees to sanction even the least of his projects before undertaking them, and bis almost punctilious regard for constitutional precedents, his ex-Majesty continued to regard the Lord of Kamakura with a very considerable measure of deep-rooted distrust. If we consider the rough and rude fashion in which the Cloistered Emperor had been coerced by former virtually military dictators, Kiyomori, Munemori, and Yoshinaka, there is nothing to be surprised at in this, perhaps. Schooled by the long series of mortifications he had had to endure at the hands of great chieftains, during his rule of more than thirty years, Shirakawa II was evidently astute enough to divine that the issuing of any such commission as the great War-Lord of the Kwanto wished to obtain could not fail to be pregnant with disaster to the interests and authority of the Imperial line. At all events, as long as he continued to live, Yoritomo had to rest contented with his office of Lord High Constable of the Empire.

But the days of Shirakawa II were rapidly drawing to a close, and he passed away in the spring of 1192, at the age of 67. Thereupon, his grandson, the titular Sovereign, Toba II, assumed the supreme direction of affairs. But as Toba II was no more than thirteen years of age at this time, he was at first almost entirely in the hands of his Ministers; and these Ministers were all more or less under the influence of Kamakura. It is not strange, then, that Yoritomo was presently gratified with that special Imperial patent he had hitherto vainly endeavoured to obtain. In August 1192 two commissioners were dispatched to Kamakura to invest him with the long-coveted office of Sei-i-Tai Shogun. Clothed in their robes of State, the commissioners proceeded to the shrine of Hachiman on Tsurugaoka, where they were solemnly received by Yoritomo’s representative attended by a throng of warriors, all in full panoply. There the new Shogun’s delegate was handed the Imperial patent, presented a hundred ryo to each of the commissioners, and returned to Yoritomo’s palace. Yoritomo, who during all this time had remained in the palace, came out as far as the porch and there received the Imperial order. Such was the simple ceremony by which Yoritomo was formally confirmed in the all but supreme and absolute sway he already wielded over the military class in the Empire.

In connection with this unpretentious, but all-important, episode in the history of Japan, two points must be briefly adverted to, but strongly insisted on. In the first place, the appointment of a Sei-i-Tai Shogun was in itself no novelty, for Shoguns there had been in scores before this date; and even of Barbarian-Subduing Great Generals there had been several since the days of Saka-no Uye no Tamura-maro, who had been the first to receive such a title. But the commission of all previous Shoguns and Sei-i-Tai Shoguns had been for a strictly limited special purpose, on the accomplishment of which the commission had to be returned to the Emperor or his representatives. Furthermore, the authority of these commanders had extended only to the troops under their flag for the time being, and the district that was the seat of war or disturbance. Now, the authority bestowed upon Yoritomo was general,—to provide for the defence and tranquillity of the Empire at large; and as such a duty was permanent, there could be no question of his having to surrender his patent upon the accomplishment of the object for which it was issued. Moreover, in case of need, it put the whole military class and the whole military resources of the Empire at his disposal.

The second point to be briefly dwelt on is this: As Lord High Constable of the sixty six provinces of Japan Yoritomo had undoubtedly exercised a commanding authority over the military class; and it might very well appear at first blush that his new commission as Sei-i-Tai Shogun added to or re­inforced that authority in no appreciable manner. But such an impression is a mistaken one. The office of Lord High Constable of the Empire, with Imperial permission to place a High Constable in each of the provinces, had indeed enabled Yoritomo to extend his authority over some 80 or 90 per cent, of the military class of Japan. But that office was felt to be anomalous; and at best an ingenious temporary makeshift. It might be revoked at any moment; and for almost every individual proceeding he had taken in the exercise of its functions, the Lord of Kamakura had either been constrained, or had felt it to lie expedient, to appeal to the Court for its sanction or instructions. Down to 1192 the contemporary records are replete with representations by Yoritomo to the Cloistered Emperor, and the Imperial replies to these communications. Now, one great peculiarity in a Shogun’s commission had invariably been that, from the moment he received his official sword from the hands of the Sovereign till the day that he returned it thereto, he was free to act on his own initiative, to punish or reward, to slay or to save alive within the assigned and legitimate sphere of his operations. Naturally this was a prerogative that appealed strongly to the imagination of military men, and ensured their respect for the office. Now, this all-important feature in the temporary commission of a Shogun for a special limited purpose was of course reproduced in Yoritomo’s patent of Sei i-Tai Shogun, appointed to provide for the permanent defence and tranquillity of the Empire. To be directed by a Lord High Constable, who was perpetually appealing to the Court for permission to do this or that, and from whom permission was not unfrequently withheld, was one thing, and to be absolutely at the orders of an autocrat within his own sphere, free to act on his own untrammelled initiative, and from whose orders and decision there was no appeal to any higher authority, was another. And a vastly different “another,” too. It need excite no great measure of surprise, then, to find that Samurai presently began to regard the situation from the standpoint of Oba Kageyoshi, who asserted that while in the army officers and soldiers were bound to obey the orders of the Shogun, but not the decree of the Emperor.

Such language, however, was nothing specially novel in the Japan coeval with Richard I of England, it had been held more than a century before by the devoted followers of Minamoto Yoriiye, when the Court had refused to reward their captain for his suppression of the disorders in Matsu and Dewa. Somewhere about the same date we have found a Taira retainer roundly giving the ex-Emperor Shirakawa I to understand that in the event of a clash between statutes of his ex Majesty’s making and the House-Code of the Ise Heishi. it was not the latter that was to be thrown overboard. Here be it said, however, that Yoritomo was exceedingly careful to check all language of this kind. His Reverence Chogen once addressed him as Kimi (Lord); and the Shogun at once forbade him to do so a second time, for the term Kimi should only be applied to his Majesty, and not be loosely used. The young Sovereign, Toba II, although later on he showed himself possessed at once of ability and of a masterful temper, at first showed a greater fondness for pleasure and dissipation than for cares of State; and His Reverence, the turbulent and strong-willed Abbot, Mongaku Shonin, strongly urged his friend Yoritomo to depose him summarily, and replace him by his brother Morisada Shinno. But, we are told, much as the Shogun respected his old ally and benefactor, the Abbot Mongaku, he recoiled with horror from his suggestion. To the Lord of Kamakura it seemed like laying a profane hand upon the Ark of the Covenant. But in spite of all this, just let us throw a glance forward to what wo are destined to see in 1221,—scarcely a quarter of a century from this date, when Yoritomo professed himself so scandalised and horrified at the mere suggestion of his ghostly friend Mongaku Shonin. The titular Sovereign, Chukyo Tenno, a babe of less than three years of age, still in his swaddling-clothes, summarily deposed after a “reign” of 70 days, one ex-Emperor (Juntoku), then 24 years, summarily exiled to Sado; his elder brother and immediate predecessor on the throne, Tsuchimikado, then 26, deported to Tosa, while the father of the latter two, Toha II, whose shortcomings and faults Yoritomo had endured so dutifully and meekly, was now most unceremoniously relegated to the lonely islands of Oki, to spend the last eighteen years of his allotted span among the fishy smells of Amagori, Such a state of things was doubtless no outcome of Yoritomo’s own personal teaching; but on the other hand it was the logical and practical result of his statecraft.

To carry on its work the new Bakufu needed a highly efficient if not very elaborate administrative machine of its own. As a matter of fact this had been already installed in Kamakura, either in, or before, the year 1184. Its chief component parts were the three great sections of (1) the Samurai-dokoro. (2) the Kumonjo, which title was altered to the Mandokoro in 1191, and (3) the Monch jo.

The first of these, the Samuraidokoro, established in 1180. was largely of the nature of a General Staff, although its functions were more extensive. In the great campaigns of 1184 and 1185, we have seen the President (Betto) and the other members (Shoshi) of this board detailed for service with Noriyori and Yoshitsune respectively, with the duty of advising these commanders and of punishing and rewarding the officers and men serving under them. When sitting in Kamakura it had to deal with all questions of promotion and degradation, and to act as a sort of moral police over the conduct of the Samurai. Naturally enough, the President of this Board occupied a position of great authority and influence. The first to hold this office was that Wada Yoshimori who was the first to break through the Taira line of battle at Dan-no-ura. After the death of Yoritomo in 1191, Wada’s power became more and more formidable, and he at last challenged the rapidly rising Hojo ascendancy in the field of battle. He was defeated and slain (1213); but at first the contest bade fair to be no unequal one. From that date the Hojo Shikken, or Regent, was careful to assume and keep the Presidency of the Samuraidokoro in his own hands.

One thing that honourably distinguished Yoritomo’s rule from first to last was the extreme and constant anxiety he evinced that the administration of justice should be at once pure, prompt, and efficient. Time and again we read of him hearing evidence and deciding suits and disputes in person. In 1184 he erected the Monchujo as a Supreme Court for the decision of all civil cases in the last resort. Its first president was Miyoshi Yasunobu, the son of Yoritomo’s old nurse, who had acted as his secret agent in Kyoto during his years of exile in Izu. In 1220, when 81 years of age, Yasunobu transmitted his post of Shitsuji, or President of the Monchujo, to his son Yasutoshi; but a little later on the Hojo Regent appropriated this post also.

The Kumonjo, established in 1184, but known from 1191 onwards as the Mandokoro, had to deal with general administrative business and measures. Its first Betto or President was that Oe Hiromoto whom we have seen suggesting to Yoritomo the astute device of placing Shugo in the several provinces and Jito in the manors. Its first Vice-President (Fujiwara Yukimasa) as also its two secretaries Fujiwara Toshinaga and Nakahara Mitsuie, were, like Oe Hiromoto himself, either Kyoto lawyers or literati, or the descendants of such. In 1225 the Mandokoro was reorganised. In or before that year the Hojo Shikken (Regent) assumed the Presidency in it, and under him met 15 or 16 Hyojoshu or Councillors. Of these a full half were literati—Oes, Kiyowaras, Nakaharas, Miyoshis, Nikaidos, Saitos, and so forth— whose tenure of office was not merely for life, but actually hereditary; while the other members were selected from the principal Daimyo according to their aptitude for the duties of the post.

The new administration of the Bakufu was successful and efficient from its inception, and it continued for the best part of a century at least to be successful, efficient, and on the whole highly beneficent to the interests of the great bulk of the Japanese people at large. A careful examination of the personnel that directed its chief organs will help very much to enable us to understand why this should have been so.

As has been already remarked, not only all the great offices of State, but even the chief and only lucrative positions in the Eight Boards of the old Kyoto Government, had for generations been monopolised by fashionable blue-blooded courtiers, principally Fujiwaras and civilian Minamotos. whose notions of conducting administrative business were limited to affixing their seals to documents whose contents and purport they scarcely ever glanced at. All the real, hard, honest work was performed by the members of certain obscure families of savants, Oes, Miyoshis, Kiyowaras, Nakaharas, and others. No matter what their attainments, merits, or length of service might be, a career for these men in the capital had long been impossible. The University, in which their ancestors had held important posts, had been gradually stripped of nearly all its endowments, and existed merely in name. In their own houses, these savants continued to give instruction in what had been the traditional and hereditary lore of their family, by way of eking out the scanty perquisites of routine official work. Now, it is not too much to say that, albeit held in such low esteem, the services of these men in the Chancelleries and Bureaux were, and had been for long, simply indispensable. Some of them were skilled mathematicians, accountants, and financiers; others were the sole depositaries of the legal knowledge of the time; most of them were experts in the drafting of public documents in the proper form. Of all these important matters the Ministers and titular heads of Departments and Bureaux as a rule knew absolutely nothing. Besides, not a few of these learned drudges had from time to time developed no mean measure of political and administrative ability; now and then there were undoubtedly men of real original organising power among them. In the halcyon days of the scholar-politician, the age of Sugawara Michizane, three centuries before, some of them might have well aspired to the name and fame of statesmen. But the days of Michizane and of Uda Tenno had come and gone; and for the scholar, unless of Fujiwara or Imperial descent, there was henceforth no open place in the Councils of the Empire,—at least in Kyoto. At the best the highest post he could aspire to was that of “dry-nurse” to some high-born frivolous, ignorant, spoiled child of fortune, who might, luckily for the learned drudge only too glad to have an opportunity of supplying his Fopship with surreptitious store of wisdom, contract an itch for renown and glory as a statesman of great and original ability.

Yoritomo showed himself very prompt to profit by this peculiar situation. In Kamakura a large staff of men accustomed to and acquainted with the routine of administration in all its branches was urgently needed; and such men were not to be found in the Kwanto, tor the Kwanto from time immemorial had been a land not of scholars, but of soldiers, most of them hopelessly illiterate. Accordingly at an early date he exerted himself to enlist the services of some of the able but ill-requited savants and learned experts who really carried on the business of the old central government in Kyoto. When the latter learned that there was actually such a thing as a career open for them in the East, and that they could safely count upon finding a field for the display of their abilities there, they at once left the incompetent Court nobles to their own unaided devices, and flocked to the new city on Sagami Bay, where they met with an appreciation all the more delight fill to them because of its novelty. In Kyoto they had been so many mere clerical drudges; in Kamakura they filled the most important posts in two out of the three great Boards through which the Bakufu was destined to rule the Empire. This exodus was a most serious blow to the Kyoto administration. It will be remembered that the effort to revive the old Kirokusho there was to a large extent a failure; and one reason for this doubtless was that the high-born commissioners placed at the head of it could no longer exploit the brains of the bumble, but indispensable, experts they had formerly treated with such scant measure of consideration. What was Kyoto’s paralysing loss, was Kamakura’s inestimable gain, for it would be hard to overestimate the value of the services rendered by the Oes, the Miyoshis, and their confreres io Yoritomo and the Bakufu. In the task of organising the administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery of the new system which was destined in a great measure to supplant that of the Reformers of 645. the duties of these Kyoto savants were nearly as onerous as those of Bin and Takamuku had been five centuries and a half before.

In a broad survey of the general characteristic features of the political developments of the middle of the seventh century and those of the end of the twelfth, in the midst of glaring antitheses, we meet with some curious analogies. In both cases a great centralising effort had been successfully accomplished. In both cases the effort had been accomplished through the same agency. The Reformers had worked through the institution of the Emperor. Yoritomo had worked through the institution of the Throne, for during the first decade of his power he had to deal not with an Emperor, but a Cloistered Emperor. On the other hand, among the prime objects of the Reformers of 645 had been the overthrow of the Clan and Group systems, the bringing of the throne into contact with the whole body of its subjects through its own properly appointed officers, and the prevention of the rise of any feudal system or specially privileged military class. The first two objects were successfully attained; as regards the third the march of time and the logic of facts had abundantly demonstrated the futility of the measure of precaution that had been taken. Not only had a military class arisen which, as a rule, refused to contribute to the fiscal burdens of the State, which had usurped criminal and civil jurisdiction over the occupants of its manors; but this military class had in its native seats in the provinces virtually emancipated itself from all control by the lawfully appointed officials and representatives of the central administration. The only safeguard the civilian authorities had against the violence of this military caste was the dissensions and mutual jealousies of its members; and for generation after generation, a measure of authority had been maintained by the not very profound device of playing one military chief off against another. In defiance of the Reform institutions, Japan was rapidly drifting back into social conditions somewhat analogous to those which had prevailed in the pre-Taikwa age, when the throne could address most of its subjects only through the heads of the clans and groups to which they respectively belonged. Now, with the vast bulk of the Buké practically the vassals of one single great chief of their own class, with their affairs administered and regulated by the Samuraidokoro and the other two great Boards of Kamakura (acting through their Shugo and Jito in the provinces) and expressly and emphatically forbidden to hold any direct intercourse with either the Court or the Court functionaries of Kyoto, the extent of the breakdown of the Reform system becomes conspicuously clear.

A distinguished authority has remarked that if we take a broad view of Japanese history, we shall recognise in it a constant oscillation between two forms of government. At one time there is a strong central authority with local governors removable at pleasure or at short intervals. By degrees, the latter offices become hereditary and more independent of the throne, so that eventually a sort of feudal system is the result. Then the pendulum swings back again, and under a strong ruler the old centralised government is restored, while the local nobles, deprived of effective authority, retain their titles only...  The Revolution of 1868 is a remarkable example of a rapid change from a feudal system to a strong central government. The converse process is always more gradual.”

In their broad outlines these remarks are not amiss. But a somewhat closer inspection of the channels actually traversed by the course of Japanese history serves to indicate that, to be in accordance with all the requisites of a general proposition consonant with fact and truth, they must, at all events, be amplified, if not actually modified. In the first place it was not so much the Provincial Governors that founded feudal families between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. Under Shirakawa I, when the sale of offices was at its worst, a good many of these posts were supposed to have become hereditary. But even so, only a very few of these hereditary Provincial Governors transmitted their offices to descendants, and perhaps not half-a-score of them became territorially influential. The exceptions were military men, who, as we have seen, were occasionally invested with these civilian posts. It was from the class of District Governors (about 600 in number) that the great bulk of the later feudal gentry descended. Then, again, among the Sovereigns, Kwammu and Sanjo II were almost the only “strong rulers” who took effective means, if not to restore the “old centralised government,” at all events to stay its decline. The “strong rule ” who first actually succeeded in arresting the process of disintegration, and of making it no longer possible for petty local potentates simply to do what was right in their own eyes, was not an Emperor; and although he effectually rescued the Empire from impending chaos and anarchy by establishing a strong central authority over the most turbulent class in it, it was not exactly the old centralised government that Yoritomo restored. That, indeed, with all its machinery was professedly left intact. For long it had shown itself incompetent to control that military class which had arisen in spite of all the projects of the Reformers of 645 to prevent such a contingency; and, in giving the Lord of Kamakura what was virtually a permanent commission to control that class, it was merely divesting itself of functions which it had become incapable of discharging.

The collateral centralised administration of Kamakura continued to be wonderfully efficient down to a few years before its overthrow in 1333. Then there was an actual attempt to restore the sway of the old centralised government of Kyoto in all its plenitude; but in less than five years this ended in disastrous failure. One outcome of the attempt was a new line of Shoguns, and another was a long succession war of 56 years. During this time a number of great feudatories arose, who now, and during the next two or three generations, succeeded in emancipating themselves from the control of Emperor and Shogun alike; and, at the date of the arrival of Europeans in Japan, there was practically no such thing as a central government in the Empire. To restore this was the work,—not of any strong Sovereign, but of Nobunaga, Hideyoshi, and Iyeyasu Tokugawa; and the polity of the Empire, instead of then reverting to the old centralised government of 645, became a centralised feudalism. And one of the prime objects of the Reformers of 645 had been to prevent the appearance of any feudal system in Japan!

About the last years of Yoritomo there is not much to be said. The chief point to note is that the Empire now enjoyed the unwonted boon of peace within its borders for a season. Yoritomo made another visit to Kyoto in the spring of 1195; but during the four months he stayed there, there were no specially startling developments.

It was early in 1199 that he met his death, at the age of 53. He had gone to attend the ceremony of opening a new bridge over the Sagami River; and on his return journey he was thrown from his horse and sustained injuries which soon proved to be fatal. Tradition has it that he had been so startled by the sight of the ghosts of Yoshitsune and Yukiiye which rose from the waters of the river that he fell from his steed in a swoon, while the animal leaped into the flood and perished. Although the legend is evidently based on a Volksetymologie to account for the origin of the name Ba-nyu, by which the Sagami is known, it also indicates that in the popular judgement the death of his half-brother, Yoshitsune, must have lain heavy upon Yoritomo’s soul. In 1193 his other half-brother, Noriyori, who at one time had enjoyed so much of Yoritomo’s confidence, was also made away with for “reasons of State.” Yoritomo encouraged each of his followers to believe himself the sole confidant of his leader’s schemes, and in this cunning manner separated their interests and made them his own. Nearly all of those around him who became possible rivals in power and popularity were cruelly handled when he had exhausted the benefit of their service.” Such is one Japanese estimate of the Lord of Kamakura; and as regards his own relatives, at least, the indictment would seem to rest on a substantial foundation. Doubtless it was in the prospective interests of his own children that Yoritomo proved so unrelentingly cruel and pitiless towards his kith and kin of Minamoto stock. And yet, withal, he did not succeed in founding a house. What did perpetuate his memory was the system he organised and the administrative machine he created,—the Bakufu, to wit.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE KAMAKURA BAKUFU.(1200 - 1225A.D.)