[ 62 ]
Chapter VI
Growth and Change in the Feudal System
The Kamakura system, however well it worked at its inception, was peculiarly susceptible to the ravages of time and change. It was effective as long as its member knights remained a small and well-knit group, loyal to each other, but as the generations passed, loyalties based on family friendships and comradeship in half-forgotten campaigns wore thin. Scattered as they now were through the estates of the whole land, the descendants of the old band of knights from the Kanto region, who had won control of Japan in 1185, felt less and less the oneness of spirit of the original clique or the old sense of personal loyalty to Kamakura.
Another factor in the dissolution of the clique was its growth in numbers. The class of knights grew rapidly with each generation, but the number of positions as estate managers could not increase correspondingly. The natural tendency was for each knight to divide his feudal income from the estate he managed among all his sons. As a result of this process, many a knight in the latter part of the thirteenth century re-