ABSTRACT
With the death of Minamoto Yoritomo the fortunes of the house of Minamoto, which had risen so rapidly in the Gempei War, went as speedily into a decline. Within thirty years of the founding of the Kamakura Shōgunate the third and last Minamoto Shōgun had assassinated, and his place taken by the Hōjō. For a century and a half the power of the Shōgunate fell under the control of this family, although they respected the tradition that required the title of Shōgun to be kept within the Minamoto family, and took the tide of ‘Shikken’, or Regent instead. Thus the Shōgun, who had manipulated a puppet Emperor, became himself a puppet of the Hōjō Regency, and it was under a Hōjō, not a Minamoto, that the military government of Japan faced its most serious crisis — the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281.
