A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (14 page)

.… beggars filled the streets and their clamour was deafening. … Respectable citizens who ordinarily wore hats and shoes now went barefooted begging from
house to house. … And by the walls and in the highways you could see every-where the bodies of those who had died of starvation. And as there was none to take them away, a terrible stench filled the streets.

With the combination of natural disasters and the Genpei (Minamoto-Taira) War it must certainly have seemed to many that the world was being turned upside-down, and perhaps that the final phase of humankind predicted in
mapp
was indeed imminent.

The general gloom and melancholy of these troubled times is reflected in the world-weary poetry of Saigy
(1118–90). An aristocrat and one-time imperial guard, who had met both Taira no Kiyomori and Minamoto no Yoritomo, Saigy
renounced the world to lead the life of a reclusive monk. One of his best-known poems speaks far more than its few lines:
³²

In a tree standing

Beside a desolate field,

The voice of a dove

Calling its companions –

Lonely, terrible evening.

He is more direct in another:
³³

Times when unbroken

Gloom is over all our world,

Over which still

Sits the ever-brilliant moon:

Sight of it casts me down more.

These times of unbroken gloom were now dominated by Minamoto no Yoritomo. The changes he put in place were to mark a new era in Japan’s history.

2.3   The Warrior State: The Kamakura Period (1185–1333)

In 1185 Minamoto no Yoritomo was the most powerful figure in the land. However, he neither sought the throne for himself or his descendants, nor tried to destroy it. Instead, he sought from the court legitimisation of his power through the title
seii tai-sh
gun
(‘barbarian-subduing great general’), generally abbreviated to
sh
gun
.
³⁴
This was granted to him in 1192.

The particular nature of the relationship between legitimacy (formal authority) and actual power in Japan is an ongoing feature of the nation’s history and society.
³⁵
Typically, a high authority does not wield a similarly high degree of actual power, but instead confers legitimacy – often in the form of some title, and often under pressure – on those who do hold actual power and claim to use it in the name of that higher authority. The fact that the higher authority is the guarantor of the power-holder’s legitimacy gives the higher authority too a certain guarantee of protection. The recipient of legitimacy may in turn confer legitimacy on those below them, and so on. It is in one sense a diffusion of responsibility, and in another a hierarchical ordering of authority. Yoritomo provides an especially clear example of the process.

Mainly because of this need for legitimacy – but also partly because it has long been a practice in Japan to maintain some degree of continuity with the past amidst change – his government was a mixture of old and new. It became known as the
bakufu
(tent headquarters), a term used of the headquarters of commanders in the field, and in theory was merely the military arm of the imperial central government. The old central institutions were left largely intact, though weakened. Old titles were retained, though often given a new meaning. Ky
to still remained the official capital, and the court stayed on there.

Recent research has suggested that the court retained a greater vitality than previously believed, especially with regard to bureaucratic matters, and that religious institutions also played a significant role in the political world.
³⁶
In that sense, rather than simple warrior rule such as characterised the succeeding Muromachi period, it was perhaps more a case of cooperative rule during the Kamakura period.

Nevertheless, it is probably fair to say that in practice the real power – or more exactly the greatest real power – of government was now with the
bakufu
(sh
gunate). It was based not in Ky
to but in Kamakura in the Kant
region. This was Yoritomo’s traditional support-base, and he was moreover suspicious of the intrigues and undesirable influences in Ky
to. He preferred to keep himself a safe distance from the court.
³⁷