The Historical Context

The War of Northern and Southern Courts (c. 1331-92) was unique. Neither a conquest of a frontier people, the pacification of rebels and pirates nor a territorial dispute between warrior groups, this war pitted the imperial court against the warrior government, and later two splintered imperial courts against each other.

The Japanese archipelago became centralised gradually from the fourth to the seventh centuries, as regional powers integrated the existing beliefs in deities (kami) with Buddhism and Chinese statecraft, such as bureaucracy, laws and the emperor-centred celestial order. The imperial court set up a land allotment and taxation system, which included military conscription, but redesigned it in the ninth century to command military service from elite warriors. Leaders among these warriors were typically descendants of the superfluous sons of emperors, a condition that helped to create a vaguely connected ritual community.

In the mid twelfth century, the Taira, a warrior house descended from Emperor Kanmu (r. 781-806), manoeuvred through patron-client networks to rise within the court. Resentful of these upstarts, a prince solicited other warriors to destroy them. Minamoto Yoritomo - from Emperor Seiwa's (r. 858-76) line - obliged, and annihilated the Taira in the famous Genpei War (1183-5), described in a legendary classic war tale, The Tale of the Heike, discussed below. Yoritomo established the bakufu, a warrior government administratively distinct from and recognised by the imperial court, pur­portedly aimed to protect the courtiers' private landed interests and keep peace. The warriors' political rise, despite their subordinate position in the hierarchy of rank, titles and birth, nonetheless prompted one retired emperor to stage an unsuccessful anti-bakufu uprising in 1221.

The bakufu's reach was in fact modest and mostly limited to its own vassals through rewarded land. It developed a sophisticated judicial system and ruled more through law and adjudication than might. At the helm of warrior power were the Hojo, who rose from a relatively obscure back­ground to be shogunal regents, thanks to Hojo Masako, wife of the first shogun. At no time did the Hojo harbour a plan to destroy the imperial government or its occupants, much less the larger institutional and sym­bolic system. Status differences notwithstanding, warriors, aristocrats and royalty existed within a shared cosmological system with overlapping ancestral deities. Importantly, the Confucian notion of celestial rule under­pinned the spiritual and ritual aspects of the political order. The idea of the mandate of heaven in China, which justified rebellions against emperors who lost virtue, never took root in Japan. A semblance of relative stability and peace prevailed within an established hierarchy of resource sharing, despite warriors' steadily advancing encroachment into aristocrats' land rights.

The direct seeds of the War of Northern and Southern Courts sprouted within the court when two adult sons of Emperor Go-Saga (1220-72; r. 1242­6), both already retired emperors, competed over the throne via their progeny. Faced with an impasse, the court requested mediation from the bakufu, which eventually proposed a succession alternating between the two lines. This measure assured a relief until Emperor Go-Daigo (1288-1339; r. 1318-39) of the junior line, highly versed in the Chinese classics, blamed the bakufu for what he saw as an untenable system. He aspired to eliminate the bakufu and rule in the manner of a Chinese son of heaven.

Go-Daigo won the support of the bakufu's dissatisfied retainers, whose numbers were increasing due to the economic hardship caused partly by generations of divided inheritance and the shortage of reward land in the aftermath of the failed invasions by the Mongols, who brought no spoils (1274 and 1281).

Go-Daigo experienced mixed results, until Ashikaga Takauji (1305-58), a bakufu retainer, switched sides in 1333 and quickly crushed the bakufu, enabling Go-Daigo to institute hegemonic imperial rule. But in less than three years Takauji turned against Go-Daigo, installed a different emperor and built a new bakufu, while Go-Daigo fled to the south. Thus began the so-called period of the ‘Northern and Southern Courts' with Takauji's puppet emperor in Kyoto and Go-Daigo and his heir in Yoshino to the south, a situation that would last till 1392. Although a serial turncoat, Takauji, like the Hojo, never wavered in his commitment to the symbolic authority of emperors, the political structure they headed, the myriad associated deities and buddhas, and the moral principles of the institution. Takauji vigorously kept the imperial system alive and intact. The Ashikaga's new bakufu lasted to 1573, and the northern imperial line con­tinues to reign in today's Japan.