Hōjō Masako

Who They Were

Hōjō Masako (北条政子, ほうじょう まさこ) was a political leader of the Kamakura shogunate, the military government that ruled Japan from the late twelfth century. She was the wife of Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun, and the mother of the second and third shoguns, Minamoto no Yoriie and Minamoto no Sanetomo. Through her father, Hōjō Tokimasa, and her brother, Hōjō Yoshitoki, she belonged to the Hōjō clan, which came to dominate the shogunate as hereditary regents.

She was born in Izu Province in 1156, during the Heian period, in the first year of the Hōgen era. She died in Kamakura on 6 August 1225. Her life spans the collapse of the old court-centred order and the rise of warrior government, and she stood at the centre of both. Contemporaries knew her as the "nun shogun" — a woman who took Buddhist vows and then wielded power in her own right.

Life and Career

Masako was the eldest daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa, a local lord of Izu Province. Her marriage to Minamoto no Yoritomo, the exiled head of the Minamoto clan, tied the Hōjō fortunes to his. When Yoritomo's forces defeated the rival Taira clan and he established his headquarters at Kamakura, Masako became the wife of the most powerful warrior in Japan. She held the position of Midaidokoro (御台所, みだいどころ), the title for the wife of a shogun.

Yoritomo died in 1199. Their eldest son, Minamoto no Yoriie, became shogun, but real authority passed to Masako's father, Hōjō Tokimasa, who took the office of shikken (執権, しっけん), the regent who governed on the shogun's behalf. Yoriie was pushed aside and died in 1204. His younger brother, Minamoto no Sanetomo, became the third shogun while still a child.

In 1205 Masako moved against her own father. Tokimasa had plotted to have Sanetomo killed and to place a different candidate in the shogunate. Masako and her brother Hōjō Yoshitoki forced Tokimasa from power and sent him into exile. Yoshitoki became shikken, and Masako stood beside him as the guardian of her son's position. When Sanetomo was assassinated at Tsurugaoka Hachimangū in 1219, the direct Minamoto line ended. Masako refused to allow the court in Kyoto to reclaim authority, and the shogunate instead brought in figurehead shoguns from outside the clan while the Hōjō held real power.

After Yoshitoki died in 1224, Masako secured the succession of his son, Hōjō Yasutoki, as shikken. She died the following year, on 6 August 1225, in Kamakura. In her final years she had taken Buddhist vows and become a nun, which is why the "nun shogun" name stuck.

Why They Matter

Masako is the clearest example of a woman exercising formal political power in medieval Japan. She was not a consort acting behind a curtain; she raised armies of retainers, dismissed a regent who happened to be her father, and decided who would sit in the shogun's seat. Her intervention in 1205 kept the Hōjō clan in control of the shogunate, and her actions after 1219 kept the institution of the shogunate alive when its founding family had no heir left.

Her career also shows how the Kamakura shogunate actually worked. The shogun was often a figurehead; the shikken, drawn from the Hōjō, ran the government. Masako sat at the junction of those two roles, as widow, mother, and Hōjō daughter at once. The system she helped hold together lasted until the Hōjō fell in 1333.

The Name in Japanese

The name is written 北条政子 and read ほうじょう まさこ (Hōjō Masako).

北 — read hō here. It means "north". On its own the character is usually read kita, and it appears in everyday words such as 北口 (きたぐち, kitaguchi), "north exit".

条 — read jō here. It means "article", "clause", or "line", and historically it counted strips of land or rows of text. The combination 北条, "north line", is the name of the clan.

政 — read masa here. It means "government", "politics", or "administration". The same character appears in 政治 (せいじ, seiji), "politics", and 政府 (せいふ, seifu), "government". It is a fitting element for a woman whose life was spent managing a regime.

子 — read ko here. It means "child", and it is the standard ending for women's given names. In modern Japanese 子 is also the everyday word for "child", read ko.

Put together, the surname 北条 (Hōjō) is the clan name, and the given name 政子 (Masako) is a common pattern: a meaningful first character plus the feminine 子. Note that the character 政 is read masa in this name, not sei — Japanese names frequently use readings that differ from a character's most familiar everyday pronunciation.

Legacy

Masako's name is preserved in the An'yō-in, a Buddhist temple in Kamakura associated with her memory. She is remembered as the "nun shogun", the woman who held the Kamakura shogunate together through the deaths of her husband, both of her sons, her father's fall, and her brother's death. In Japanese accounts of the period she is a fixed point: the widow of the first shogun who outmanoeuvred the court, her own father, and every rival clan to keep power in Kamakura.