Jokyu War (1221): Emperor Go-Toba Challenges the Shogunate

The Jōkyū War was a brief armed conflict in the summer of 1221 in which the retired emperor Go-Toba tried to overthrow the Kamakura shogunate and restore the power of the imperial court. The shogunate’s regent, Hōjō Yoshitoki, sent large eastern armies against Kyoto, and the court’s forces collapsed in about a month. The war ended with three retired emperors in exile and left the warrior government in Kamakura as the real master of Japan.

Background

When Minamoto no Yoritomo founded the Kamakura shogunate in the 1180s and 1190s, he did not abolish the imperial court. Kyoto kept its emperors, its nobles and vast landed estates, while Kamakura controlled the warriors. The balance between the two was uneasy.

After Yoritomo’s death in 1199, power in Kamakura passed to the family of his widow, Hōjō Masako. Her father Tokimasa and then her brother Yoshitoki ruled as shikken, or regents, while Yoritomo’s sons served as shoguns. In early 1219 the third shogun, Minamoto no Sanetomo, was assassinated at the Tsurugaoka Hachimangū shrine by his nephew Kugyō, who was himself killed hours later. Yoritomo’s direct line was extinct.

The Hōjō asked the court for an imperial prince to become shogun, but Go-Toba refused. Kamakura instead brought a two-year-old boy from the Fujiwara (Kujō) family, Kujō Yoritsune, a distant relative of Yoritomo, with Masako and Yoshitoki governing in his name.

Go-Toba and his aims

Go-Toba (1180–1239) had been placed on the throne as a child in 1183, during the Genpei War, after the Taira fled Kyoto with Emperor Antoku. He abdicated in 1198 but, as was the custom of the age, continued to govern as retired emperor (in) from his own office. He was a gifted poet who commissioned the imperial anthology Shin Kokin Wakashū, a patron of swordsmiths and an energetic ruler determined to reassert imperial authority.

Go-Toba built up his own military forces. Besides the traditional guards he created the “western guards” (saimen no bushi) and recruited warriors from the western provinces and from temples. He also cultivated Kamakura vassals who were stationed in Kyoto or had grievances against the Hōjō, and he resented the shogunate’s stewards (jitō) on his own estates.

The outbreak of war

In the 5th month of Jōkyū 3, corresponding to early June 1221, Go-Toba issued an edict naming Hōjō Yoshitoki an enemy of the court and calling on warriors throughout the land to destroy him. His forces attacked and killed Iga Mitsusue, the Kamakura official in Kyoto who refused to join him. Go-Toba appears to have expected that the eastern vassals would abandon the Hōjō rather than defy an imperial command.

Some did join him. The eastern warrior Miura Taneyoshi, who was serving in Kyoto, sided with the court and wrote to his elder brother Miura Yoshimura, head of one of the most powerful families in the east, urging him to rise against the Hōjō. Yoshimura instead passed the letter to Yoshitoki. Even Ōe no Hiromoto’s son Chikahiro, the shogunate’s other representative in Kyoto, went over to Go-Toba. The court’s hope of splitting Kamakura from within was not unreasonable, but it failed where it mattered most.

When the news reached Kamakura, the shogunate’s leaders hesitated. According to the Azuma Kagami, the shogunate’s official chronicle, Hōjō Masako summoned the vassals and reminded them that their ranks, lands and incomes all came from Yoritomo, whose favour was “higher than the mountains and deeper than the sea”. Those who wished to join the court, she said, were free to go. Her appeal held the vassals together. On the advice of Ōe no Hiromoto, the shogunate chose to attack at once rather than wait to be attacked.

The campaign

Kamakura sent armies west along three routes: the Tōkaidō coastal road, the Tōsandō through the mountains and the Hokurikudō along the Sea of Japan. The main force was commanded by Yoshitoki’s son Hōjō Yasutoki and his brother Hōjō Tokifusa. The Azuma Kagami claims a total of 190,000 men, a figure historians regard as greatly inflated, but the eastern armies clearly far outnumbered the court’s forces.

The court’s troops tried to hold the line of the Kiso River in Mino and Owari and were swept aside. They then fell back to the traditional defences of the capital, the bridges over the Uji and Seta rivers. In heavy fighting in early July 1221, the Kamakura forces forced the crossing of the swollen Uji River, and on about the 15th day of the 6th month (early July) they entered Kyoto. Go-Toba disowned his own supporters and claimed that the war had been the work of evil advisers.

The settlement

Kamakura’s punishment was severe and unprecedented. Go-Toba was exiled to the Oki Islands, his son the retired emperor Juntoku to Sado Island, and another son, the retired emperor Tsuchimikado, who had not supported the rising, went voluntarily into exile in Tosa and later Awa. The child Emperor Chūkyō, enthroned only weeks earlier, was deposed after about seventy days, and the shogunate chose a new emperor, Go-Horikawa, from another branch of the imperial family. Several court nobles who had planned the war were executed.

About 3,000 estates held by Go-Toba’s supporters were confiscated and their stewardships given to eastern vassals, who for the first time spread in large numbers into western Japan. Yasutoki and Tokifusa remained in Kyoto at the Rokuhara office, which became the Rokuhara Tandai, a permanent Kamakura headquarters that watched the court, kept order in the capital and governed the western provinces.

Key people

• Go-Toba (1180–1239): retired emperor who launched the war and died in exile.
• Hōjō Yoshitoki (1163–1224): regent of Kamakura and target of Go-Toba’s edict.
• Hōjō Masako (1157–1225): Yoritomo’s widow, whose appeal rallied the vassals.
• Hōjō Yasutoki (1183–1242): commander of the main army and later a celebrated regent.
• Hōjō Tokifusa (1175–1240): Yoshitoki’s brother, co-commander and first co-head of Rokuhara.

Legacy

The Jōkyū War settled the balance of power between Kyoto and Kamakura for more than a century. The court kept its ceremonies and much of its wealth, but the shogunate now influenced imperial succession and controlled warriors across the whole country. Yasutoki, regent from 1224, consolidated this order with the Goseibai Shikimoku of 1232, a law code for the warrior class. The Hōjō went on to lead the defence against the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281.

The next serious imperial challenge came only with Emperor Go-Daigo, whose rising led to the fall of Kamakura and the Kenmu Restoration of 1333. In the Oki Islands, Go-Toba is remembered at Oki Shrine, founded in 1939 near the site of his exile, and his poems remain a celebrated part of Japanese literature.

Timeline

• 1219, February: Shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo is assassinated in Kamakura.
• 1219: Kujō Yoritsune is brought to Kamakura as future shogun.
• 1221, early June: Go-Toba declares Hōjō Yoshitoki an enemy of the court.
• 1221, June: Masako rallies the vassals; Kamakura armies march west.
• 1221, early July: Kamakura forces cross the Uji River and occupy Kyoto.
• 1221, July–August: Go-Toba, Juntoku and Tsuchimikado go into exile.
• 1232: The Goseibai Shikimoku is issued.
• 1239: Go-Toba dies on the Oki Islands.

Why it matters

The Jōkyū War was the decisive test of the new warrior government, and the court lost. It showed that an imperial command could no longer override the loyalty of samurai to their lords, extended Kamakura’s reach into western Japan and made the Hōjō regents the effective rulers of the country until 1333.