Negotiating the Kenmu Transformation

Civil war divided Japan for most of the fourteenth century, a conflict that ultimately resulted in the rise of regional lords, led by shoguns who controlled less territory but held it in a far more autocratic grip. Yet at the start of the century, ambitious people dreamed of very different outcomes. In Kyoto, a branch of the imperial family sought to wrench power back from those ruled in their name, and nobles planned to rule as their ministers. In Kamakura, a family of warrior-administrators attempted to consolidate their power to summon warriors to law courts and to battle. North of them, a well-connected warrior lord thought he was the culmination of his grandfather’s prayer that his family should seize the realm.

The crisis built with deceptive speed. In 1331, the emperor was exiled to a lonely island as a rebel, and his distant cousin and rival elevated in his place. In 1333, Kamakura’s administrators dispatched Ashikaga Takauji against imperial partisans in Kyoto, but he joined the rebel emperor and helped to topple Kamakura instead. By 1335, Ashikaga had turned against that emperor in favor of his cousin-rival, launching the war that would last until 1392, into which warriors all across the islands of Japan were embroiled. Suddenly there were two imperial authorities, and both could proclaim rebels, make decrees, and award land to their supporters.