ABSTRACT
The Kamakura Shogunate was founded by Minamoto Yoritomo and lasted for almost 150 years, from 1185 to 1333. It was the first of three successive warrior governments that held varying degrees of national political hegemony for some seven hundred years, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. From 1185 until his death in 1199, Yoritomo ruled supreme. His administration based in Kamakura received the imprimatur of legitimacy from the court, enabling him to institutionalize his authority in a number of different ways. The court granted him authority to appoint provincial military constables nationwide and conferred on him the title of shogun to acknowledge that he was the nation's preeminent warrior. Kamakura shogunate was a successful administrative entity, its procedural mechanisms were unable to contain a perfect storm of social, economic, and political tensions that fused in the early fourteenth century, bringing about the violent demise of the shogunate.
