Season 7, Episode 15: The Genko War, Part I

While Hojo Moritoki was the last official regent of the Kamakura Shogunate, the blame for its fall should not rest upon his shoulders alone, nor should it arguably rest on his shoulders at all. A situation had developed within the Hojo clan which helps illuminate part of the reason the Bakufu grew so weak and ineffectual in its latter days. Often, though not always, the person serving in the office of Shikken was also the Tokuso, or chief, of the Hojo Clan. This was true of the most effective regents such as Tokimune, Tokiyori, Yasutoki, and Tokimasa.

The last sitting regent who was also the Tokuso of the Hojo Clan was Hojo Takatoki. After he retired from the position of Shikken in 1326 after serving for 10 years, he continued to dominate the Bakufu and those who took the office of regent afterward were puppets for him to command. Part of the reason why the Genko Uprising of 1331 spiraled into an actual civil war was because of his hesitation and the general corruption of Bakufu leadership.

Like Hojo Sadatoki, Takatoki was twelve when he assumed the office of Shikken in 1316 and, also like Sadatoki, he quickly delegated power to his favorites, who were mostly ambitious older men more interested in developing their own influence and lining their pockets than they were with actual governance. In former times, this may have been a forgivable lapse, but the speed with which the two factions of imperial successors were gathering their own influence and armed support was quickly outpacing the capability of the Bakufu to continue keeping them in check.

While the Shogunate would ultimately win the initial clashes of 1331, very little of that victory belongs to Hojo Takatoki. He and one of his advisors bogged themselves down in petty argument for nearly a month after the conspiracy against them had been made clear, and Emperor Go-Daigo only gained more support while they bickered. This delay emboldened members of the imperial faction like Prince Moriyoshi and Kusunoki Masashige, and it seems likely that the Shogunate’s indecisiveness was taken by its enemies as a sign of vulnerability.

I mentioned Prince Moriyoshi in the previous episode, who was a son of Emperor Go-Daigo. Crushing Kamakura was always part of Go-Daigo-Tenno’s designs, as evidenced by the fact that he had made Prince Moriyoshi the abbot of Hieizan Monastery, also known as Enryaku-ji. Far from a religious decision, this was intended to place the warrior monks of that monastery under the control of someone loyal to Go-Daigo. Prince Moriyoshi excelled in martial pursuits and brought his enthusiasm for combat to his new role on Mount Hiei. As a side note, Prince Moriyoshi’s name kanji can also be read as “Morinaga” so you may find him referred to as Morinaga in some translated histories and sources. I’ll be sticking with Moriyoshi for simplicity.

The Shogunate gave Emperor Go-Daigo the opportunity to retire into a monastery and only resorted to unceremonious deposition and exile after the Emperor abjectly refused. While this politically empowered his rival line, embodied by the elevation of Emperor Kogon, it also emboldened his supporters who were still in the field. Emperor Go-Daigo wasn’t giving up, so neither should they.

Kusunoki Masashige quickly became the secular face of this anti-Shogunate rebellion as he began raiding and ambushing Shogunate army detachments throughout the rough, mountainous country south of Heian-kyo. The steep, woodsy district of Yoshino, which was in the southern part of Yamato Province in Kansai, was a good area for defending against incursions as Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi sent out the call for more loyal samurai to join in defending imperial prerogative. They hastily reinforced a hilltop fort called Akasaka which functioned as a base.

However, the army which had occupied Heian-kyo swiftly made their way south and besieged the fortress shortly after securing Emperor Go-Daigo. The defense was fierce but ultimately fire was employed and the mostly wooden fort burned to the ground. The rough, mountainous country of Yoshino, however, was full of hiding places for those who knew the area, and Kusunoki Masashige slipped away in the confusion along with Prince Moriyoshi and their collective retainers.

In early 1332, Emperor Go-Daigo was deposed and exiled to Oki Province but the Shogunate army in Kansai had returned to the Rokuhara mansion to keep order in the city and ensure that any kuge or samurai who had shown an ounce of sympathy for Go-Daigo-Tenno was kept under strict watch. Some sources claim that the Shogunate believed both Kusunoki Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi were killed in the fire that consumed Akasaka fortress, but I think accounts that claim it was an intentional ruse of Masashige, that he had essentially faked their deaths, perhaps give the expert tactician a little too much credit.

Throughout 1332, Kusunoki Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi worked to rebuild their numbers and continue the fight. They constructed new forts atop steep ridges and hard points surrounded by dense forests, sheer ravines, and other impassable land formations. By the end of 1332, it was clear that the Shogunate could not ignore these loyalists any longer, but needed to crush Masashige and the rebellious prince.

The convergence of Kamakura armies on Kansai would take some time and meanwhile Kusunoki Masashige quickly became enemy number one for Shogunate forces. By early 1333, he was comfortably ensconced among like-minded local samurai in Kawachi province, giving him access to Tennoji, a temple near a road that led straight to Heian-kyo. This was too close for comfort, so the garrison of the Rokuhara Tandai moved quickly to crush this loyalist threat.

A force of 5,000 from Rokuhara met with Masashige’s army and the fighting was quite intense, lasting from morning until night. The forces loyal to Go-Daigo appeared to be in retreat, so the Bakufu troops charged after them, crossing the wide Yodo River in their eager pursuit. As they were still crossing, Masashige gave the orders for his army to turn back around and charge the pursuing force in a maneuver that I have to imagine Genghis Khan would have approved of. The result was a full rout of Shogunate troops, who made their way back to Heian-kyo to report their crushing defeat.

Kusunoki Masashige was happy to let them straggle back to the capital without pursuit because the symbolic victory would be enough, for the time being, to bolster recruitment efforts and convince imperial-friendly samurai that the mighty Shogunate could be defeated. He also knew that trying to take the capital at this early stage would be a short-lived conquest.

However, the Bakufu faced a dilemma in their quest to take back control of Kansai; raising an army to flush Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi out of their mountaintop fortifications would require redeploying troops stationed in outlying areas which they knew could lose them control of those provinces as well. Still, they could hardly let Masashige and his compatriots continue embarrassing them, so they rallied those troops to fight him and in many places powerful local clans re-established control over those domains. In the west, the Kikuchi clan of Kyushu seized their moment and in the north the Yuki clan of Mutsu soon ousted the remnants of Kamakura oversight. The Akamatsu clan of Harima even raised their own army and invaded the neighboring province of Settsu, daring even to march all the way to Heian-kyo and attempt to seize the capital. This effort ultimately failed, but it boded ill for the Shogunate’s future.

In late January 1333, the Bakufu’s grand army arrived at last in the capital. They were soon deployed into three divisions who were all stabbing southward from Heian-kyo to destroy the last vestiges of support for Emperor Go-Daigo who had withdrawn to the mountains of Yoshino upon their arrival in the capital.

In “A History of Japan 1334-1615,” George Sansom notes that the Shogunate took the extraordinary measure of announcing bounties for the heads of Kusunoki Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi. He interprets this as another sign of Bakufu weakness, however, given that they were essentially reduced to nakedly bribing their warriors to eliminate their enemies. It was also a significant breach of respect for the imperial family to place a kill-bounty upon the head of a prince.

Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi had been preparing for this invasion by hardening and reinforcing the many forts which dotted the mountaintops of Yoshino. These are often referred to as castles in the sources, but I prefer calling them forts because that paints a more accurate mental picture. Ringed by layers of palisades with several wooden towers, these fortifications were nonetheless quite difficult to breach and when the fort at Kami-Akasaka was besieged, the defenders would succeed not only in causing high casualties among the assaulting army but were also able to slip away and seek the protection of the nearby fortress of Chihaya. Both Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi managed to escape this way and continued to hold out against a rapidly-tiring foe.

The fort at Kami-Akasaka was built intentionally to delay the assaulting army, rather than bog them down permanently. The Hojo forces targeted a local river which acted as a water supply for the fort and when it was cut off, Masashige abandoned it for Chihaya. Built high atop a mountain peak and fortified by boulders and large fallen trees, Chihaya fortress also contained a well for fresh water and large stores of food. Viable approaches to the fortification were limited by the severe terrain to a few roads and open areas which were easily monitored by Masashige’s defending troops.

I haven’t been specific about the troop counts on either side of this engagement because I wanted to save it for a dramatic reveal, so here goes. The three divisions which composed the Bakufu armies probably totaled around 100,000 warriors, though it may have been closer to 80,000. The troops gathered by Kusunoki Masashige at Chihaya fortress, on the other hand, probably totaled around 2,000.

With numbers like these, you may be expecting that Masashige and his compatriots will eventually get overrun by a sheer stampede of Kamakura warriors, but the narrow roads and steep cliffside meant that the Bakufu’s numbers were effectively neutralized. The 2,000-strong loyalist army inside fort Chihaya was well-supplied in both essential foodstuff and materiel. Masashige himself had also by this point learned invaluable local knowledge of the landscape and its many ravines, hidden trails, and blind corners which were ideal for ambushing Shogunate scouting parties.

The fort of Chihaya held out for an impressive ten weeks against superior Bakufu numbers. On more than one occasion assaults were repulsed by Masashige’s forces sallying from the walls and charging full force into their enemies. Those assaults which managed to get close enough to try and scale the walls were met with rocks, arrows, and large pots of boiling water.

The defense of Chihaya became an inflection point for the fortunes of loyalist forces. As the siege dragged on, the supporters of the Bakufu, as well as its representative army, became demoralized and gloomy. Many samurai who had avoided supporting Emperor Go-Daigo because they feared the Shogunate’s power began to realize they may have been fearing a paper tiger.

An additional complication emerged for the Bakufu in the spring of 1333. Despite his exile on the Oki islands, Emperor Go-Daigo had been receiving regular correspondence with both Masashige and Prince Moriyoshi via a small fishing vessel that ferried the letters back and forth once a month or so. Convinced that his moment had arrived, he conspired with a sympathetic guard to flee his imprisonment and sail for western Honshu. He managed to elude his pursuers sent by the governor of Oki province long enough to land in Chugoku and seek shelter with a supporting samurai. Nawa Nagatoshi greeted the emperor and ushered him to safety into Hoki Province, which lies on the northern-central stretch of Chugoku. He was secure enough in this location to announce his return to the nation, calling for loyal samurai to join the army he was assembling on Senjo Mountain in Hoki Province.

All had not yet been lost for the Bakufu, however. While the upper echelons were mostly staffed by incompetent and corrupt yes-men who flattered Hojo Takatoki and soaked up tax income, there were still a few loyal and influential samurai who served the Shogunate faithfully. We briefly discussed Ashikaga Takauji in the previous episode, as the Bakufu kidnapped his family to ensure his obedience in leading Kamakura troops against Heian-kyo in 1331. Apart from being another example of desperate, ham-fisted thuggery on the part of the declining Shogunate, this incident is also said to be the beginning of a bitter rift between the Bakufu and Takauji which Kamakura could ill afford at a time like this.

The Ashikaga family was a Seiwa-Genji-descended clan who had supported Minamoto Yoritomo in the Gempei War, but they had deep, strong roots in Kanto which the Hojo seem to have taken for granted. Another significant family was the Nitta clan, who descended from a common ancestor to the Ashikaga. They had not done as well as the Ashikaga, and the clan’s chief, Nitta Yoshisada, had been nursing old grudges against both Takauji and the Bakufu.

It was not uncommon for the Shogunate to set two rivals against one another to compete for battlefield rewards and honors, in fact it was a pretty smart strategy when trying to manage the militant clan leaders. Both men would be given armies and sent to different places in hopes that their presence and martial expertise would soon bring this situation under control. Nitta Yoshisada was ordered to support the assault on Chihaya fortress while Ashikaga Takauji was given command over a large host of eastern warriors and sent to crush Emperor Go-Daigo’s loyalists in Hoki Province.

We don’t know whether or not Hojo Takatoki understood the kind of risk he was taking assigning these two warriors with incredibly important tasks and giving them command over large armies, but at this point he did not have much of a choice. Without question Takauji and Yoshisada were the right samurai for these tasks, but both were also ambitious men who had reason to feel that they had climbed as high as they possibly could within the Bakufu political structure and that their only hope of climbing any higher might be to consider other options.

Next time, we will explore the consequences of the Bakufu’s ham-fisted treatment of its vassals as the Kamakura Shogunate’s chickens would at last come home to roost.