political order of feudalism. Yet the prestige of the imperial line and its continuing religious functions kept alive the fiction of imperial rule during the following six centuries of feudalism, until new conditions made possible its reappearance as a significant element in the political life of the nation.
The Kamakura system centered around the Shogun, the leader of the clique, and in theory the only unifying force was the personal loyalty of each individual knight to the Shogun. In practice, however, the person of the Shogun soon became an unimportant factor, and the system proved to have amazing strength of itself.
Yoritomo, the first Shogun, jealously rid himself of his hero brother and other leading members of his family. After the death of Yoritomo factional strife among his descendants, fostered by his wife’s relatives, who had the family name of Hojo, soon led to the elimination of his heirs. In 1219 an assassination ended the Minamoto line, and thereafter the Hojo, who in typical Japanese fashion contented themselves with the title of “Regent,” ruled through a puppet Shogun, first chosen from the Fujiwara family and then from the imperial family.
Thus, one finds in thirteenth century Japan an emperor who was a mere puppet in the hands of a retired emperor and of a great court family, the Fujiwara, who together controlled a government which was in fact merely a sham government, completely dominated by the private government of the Shogun—who in turn was a puppet in the hands of a Hojo regent. The man behind the throne had become a series of men, each one in turn controlled by the man behind himself.
