Siege of Kamakura

What Happened

On 1 July 1333, an army loyal to Emperor Go-Daigo (後醍醐天皇, Go-Daigo Tennō) appeared before Kamakura, the seat of the Kamakura shogunate. The city fell five days later, on 5 July. The attacking force was commanded by Nitta Yoshisada (新田義貞, Nitta Yoshisada), a warrior from the Kantō region who had turned against the shogunate earlier that year.

Kamakura was a difficult target. The city sits on a coastal plain enclosed by steep wooded hills, and the shogunate had fortified the few passes that led inland. Nitta's troops attacked along several of these routes at once, so that the defenders could not concentrate at a single point. The Hōjō (北条) family, which had effectively ruled Japan through the shogunate's regency for over a century, could not hold the passes.

The fighting reached the city itself, and Kamakura was destroyed in the course of it. The surviving Hōjō leaders withdrew to Tōshō-ji (東勝寺, Tōshō-ji), the family temple, and killed themselves there rather than surrender, together with the remaining members of the clan. The siege ended the Hōjō regency and, with it, the Kamakura shogunate as a functioning government.

Background

The Kamakura shogunate was established at the end of the twelfth century, with a shogun as its nominal head. Real power, however, lay with the Hōjō, a warrior family that held the office of regent, or shikken (執権, shikken), and directed the shogunate's affairs. By the early fourteenth century the Hōjō had held that office continuously for generations.

Emperor Go-Daigo came to the throne in 1318 and set out to restore direct imperial rule, which had been eclipsed by warrior governments for more than a century. The shogunate exiled him to the island of Oki in 1332 after a first attempt to overthrow it failed. He escaped the following year and resumed the struggle, drawing support from warriors who resented Hōjō dominance.

The fighting that followed is known as the Genkō War (元弘の乱, Genkō no ran), named for the era in which it began. Nitta Yoshisada was one of the commanders who joined Go-Daigo's cause. The siege of Kamakura followed the Battle of Sekido (赤坂城の戦い, Akasaka-jō no tatakai), a fortress engagement in the same campaign.

Why It Mattered

The fall of Kamakura ended more than a century of Hōjō rule. The regency had been the real centre of political authority in Japan, and its collapse left the shogunate with no one to run it. The Hōjō who survived the siege were scattered or dead, and the family never recovered its position.

Emperor Go-Daigo entered Kamakura's ruins and then returned to Kyoto, where he began what is called the Kenmu Restoration (建武の新政, Kenmu no shinsei), an attempt to govern through the imperial court and its nobles rather than through warrior houses. The period takes its name from the Kenmu era and runs from 1333 to 1336.

The restoration did not last. It satisfied neither the warriors who had won the war nor the great families who had stayed out of it, and within three years Ashikaga Takauji (足利尊氏, Ashikaga Takauji) had turned against Go-Daigo and set up a new warrior government in Kyoto. The Kamakura shogunate's destruction therefore did not end warrior rule; it rearranged who held it. The next event in the sequence recorded for this campaign is the Siege of Tōshō-ji (東勝寺合戦, Tōshō-ji kassen), the final stand of the Hōjō at their family temple.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name is 鎌倉の戦い, read かまくらのたたかい (Kamakura no tatakai). In romaji: Kamakura no tatakai.

The name breaks into three parts. 鎌倉 is the place, の is the possessive particle linking it to what follows, and 戦い is the word for a battle or fight. Literally, "the battle of Kamakura".

鎌 — read here as kama. It means a sickle, the curved blade used for cutting grass and grain. It appears in relatively few common words, and its most familiar role is in this place name.

倉 — read here as kura. It means a storehouse, granary, or warehouse — a building for keeping goods. The same character appears in 倉庫 (そうこ, sōko), a warehouse.

Together 鎌倉 (かまくら, Kamakura) is a place name, not a description of a sickle or a storehouse. The city lies in what is now Kanagawa Prefecture, on the coast south-west of Tokyo, and the coordinates recorded for the siege are 35.3158° N, 139.5503° E. The name is written with these two characters and read Kamakura; the individual character readings are not the readings used when the two are said together.

の — read no. A particle, written in hiragana rather than kanji. It links two nouns, marking the first as the possessor or modifier of the second. Here it makes 鎌倉 modify 戦い: the battle of Kamakura. The same particle does the same work in 日本の歴史 (にほんのれきし, nihon no rekishi), "the history of Japan".

戦 — read here as tataka. It means war, battle, or combat. On its own the character is also read sen, as in 戦争 (せんそう, sensō), war, and 戦国時代 (せんごくじだい, Sengoku jidai), the Warring States period.

い — read i. Hiragana, not a kanji. It completes the verb 戦う (たたかう, tatakau), to fight. Written as 戦い (たたかい, tatakai), the form used here, the word becomes a noun: a fight, a battle.

So the full name is a place name plus a possessive particle plus "battle" — the standard Japanese pattern for naming a siege or engagement after the place where it was fought. The era name recorded for the year of the siege is Shōkyō (正慶, Shōkyō), year 2.

Key Figures

Nitta Yoshisada (新田義貞, Nitta Yoshisada) commanded the army that took Kamakura. He was a Kantō warrior who joined Emperor Go-Daigo's cause in 1333 and led the assault on the city from 1 to 5 July of that year.

Emperor Go-Daigo (後醍醐天皇, Go-Daigo Tennō) was the emperor whose campaign to restore direct imperial rule set off the Genkō War. Exiled to Oki in 1332, he escaped and returned to lead the coalition that destroyed the Hōjō regency. After the siege he began the Kenmu Restoration, which lasted from 1333 to 1336.

The Hōjō clan (北条) had held the office of regent and dominated the Kamakura shogunate for over a century. Its leading members withdrew to Tōshō-ji (東勝寺, Tōshō-ji), the family temple, after the city fell, and killed themselves there with the rest of the clan.