Kamakura (鎌倉, Kamakura; [ka̠ma̠kɯ̟ɾa̠] ⓘ), officially Kamakura City (鎌倉市, Kamakura-shi), is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kantō region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the total area of 39.67 km2 (15.32 sq mi). Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939.
Kamakura was Japan's de facto capital when it was the seat of the Kamakura shogunate from 1185 to 1333, established by Minamoto no Yoritomo. It was the first military government in Japan's history. After the downfall of the shogunate, Kamakura saw a temporary decline. However, during the Edo period, it regained popularity as a tourist destination among the townspeople of Edo. Despite suffering significant losses of historical and cultural assets due to the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, Kamakura continues to be one of the major tourist attractions in the Kantō region, known for its historical landmarks such as Tsurugaoka Hachimangū and the Great Buddha of Kamakura.
Toponomy
The name Kamakura appears in the Kojiki of 712, and is also mentioned in the c. 8th century Man'yōshū as well as in the Wamyō Ruijushō of 938. However, the city clearly appears in the historical record only with Minamoto no Yoritomo's founding of the Kamakura shogunate in 1192.
There are various hypotheses about the origin of the name. According to the most likely theory, Kamakura, surrounded as it is on three sides by mountains, was likened both to a cooking hearth (竃, kamado, kama) and to a warehouse (倉, kura), because both only have one side open.
Another and more picturesque explanation is a legend, relating how Fujiwara no Kamatari stopped at Yuigahama on his way to today's Ibaraki Prefecture, where he wanted to pray at the Kashima Shrine for the fall of Soga no Iruka. He dreamed of an old man who promised his support, and upon waking, he found next to his bed a type of spear called a kamayari. Kamatari enshrined it in a place called Ōkura. Kamayari plus Ōkura then turned into the name Kamakura. However, this and similar legends appear to have arisen only after Kamatari's descendant Fujiwara no Yoritsune became the fourth shōgun of the Kamakura shogunate in 1226, some time after the name Kamakura appears in the historical record. It used to be also called Renpu (鎌府) (short for Kamakura Shogunate (鎌倉幕府, Kamakura Bakufu)).
History
Early history
The earliest traces of human settlements in the area date back at least 10,000 years. Obsidian and stone tools found at excavation sites near Jōraku-ji were dated to the Old Stone Age (between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago). During the Jōmon period, the sea level was higher than now and all the flat land in Kamakura up to Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū and, further east, up to Yokohama's Totsuka-ku and Sakae-ku was under water. Thus, the oldest pottery fragments found come from hillside settlements of the period between 7500 BC and 5000 BC. In the late Jōmon period the sea receded and civilization progressed. During the Yayoi period (300 BC–300 AD), the sea receded further almost to today's coastline, and the economy shifted radically from hunting and fishing to farming.
The Azuma Kagami describes pre-shogunate Kamakura as a remote, forlorn place, but there is reason to believe its writers simply wanted to give the impression that prosperity had been brought there by the new regime. To the contrary, it is known that by the Nara period (about 700 AD) there were both temples and shrines. Sugimoto-dera for example was built during this period and is therefore one of the city's oldest temples. The town was also the seat of area government offices and the point of convergence of several land and marine routes. It seems therefore only natural that it should have been a city of a certain importance, likely to attract Yoritomo's attention.
Kamakura period
The events, historical actors, and the culture of the period starting from Minamoto no Yoritomo's birth to the death of the last of his sons have been throughout Japanese history the background and the inspiration of many poems, books, jidaigeki TV dramas, Kabuki plays, songs, manga and videogames.
Yoritomo, after the defeat and almost complete extermination of his family at the hands of the Taira clan, managed in the space of a few years to go from being a fugitive hiding from his enemies inside a tree trunk to being the most powerful man in the land. Defeating the Taira clan, Yoritomo became de facto ruler of much of Japan and founder of the Kamakura shogunate, an institution destined to last 141 years and to have immense repercussions over the country's history.
The Kamakura shogunate era is called by historians the Kamakura period and, although its end is clearly set (Siege of Kamakura (1333)), its beginning is not. Different historians put Kamakura's beginning at a different point in time within a range that goes from the establishment of Yoritomo's first military government in Kamakura (1180) to his elevation to the rank of Sei-i Taishōgun (征夷大将軍) in 1192. It used to be thought that during this period, effective power had moved completely from the Emperor in Kyoto to Yoritomo in Kamakura, but the progress of research has revealed this was not the case. Even after the consolidation of the shogunate's power in the east, the Emperor continued to rule the country, particularly its west. However, it is undeniable that Kamakura had a certain autonomy and that it had surpassed the technical capital of Japan politically, culturally and economically. The shogunate even reserved for itself an area in Kyoto called Rokuhara (六波羅) where lived its representatives, who were there to protect its interests.
In 1179, Yoritomo married Hōjō Masako, an event of far-reaching consequences for Japan. In 1180, he entered Kamakura, building his residence in a valley called Ōkura (in today's Nishi Mikado). The stele on the spot reads:
737 years ago, in 1180, Minamoto no Yoritomo built his mansion here. Consolidated his power, he later ruled from home, and his government was therefore called Ōkura Bakufu (大蔵幕府). He was succeeded by his sons Yoriie and Sanetomo, and this place remained the seat of the government for 46 years until 1225, when his wife Hōjō Masako died. It was then transferred to Utsunomiya Tsuji (宇津宮辻).
Erected in March 1917 by the Kamakurachō Seinenkai
In 1185, his forces, commanded by his younger brother Minamoto no Yoshitsune, vanquished the Taira clan and in 1192 he received from Emperor Go-Toba the title of Sei-i Taishōgun. Yoshitsune's power would however cause Yoritomo's envy; the relationship between the brothers soured, and in 1189 Yoritomo was given Yoshitsune's head pickled in liquor. For the same reason, in 1193 he had his other brother Noriyori killed. Power was now firmly in his hands, but the Minamoto dynasty and its power however were to end as quickly and unexpectedly as they had started.
In 1199, Yoritomo died falling from his horse at the age of 51, and was buried in a temple that had until then housed his tutelary goddess. He was succeeded by his 17-year-old son Minamoto no Yoriie under the regency of his maternal grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa. A long and bitter fight ensued in which entire clans like the Hatakeyama, the Hiki, and the Wada were wiped out by the Hōjō who wished to get rid of Yoritomo's supporters and consolidate their power. Yoriie did become head of the Minamoto clan and was regularly appointed shōgun in 1202 but by that time, real power had already fallen into the hands of the Hōjō clan. Yoriie plotted to take back his power, but failed and was assassinated on July 17, 1204. His six-year-old first son Ichiman had already been killed during political turmoil in Kamakura, while his second son Yoshinari at age six was forced to become a Buddhist priest under the name Kugyō. From then on all power would belong to the Hōjō, and the shōgun would be just a figurehead. Since the Hōjō were part of the Taira clan, it can be said that the Taira had lost a battle, but in the end had won the war.
Yoritomo's second son and third shōgun Minamoto no Sanetomo spent most of his life staying out of politics and writing poetry, but was nonetheless assassinated in February 1219 by his nephew Kugyō under the giant ginkgo tree whose trunk still stood at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū until it was uprooted by a storm in the early hours of March 10, 2010. Kugyō himself, the last of his line, was beheaded as a punishment for his crime by the Hōjō just hours later. Barely 30 years into the shogunate, the Seiwa Genji dynasty who had created it in Kamakura had ended.
In 1293, a severe earthquake killed 23,000 people and seriously damaged the city. In the confusion following the quake, Hōjō Sadatoki, the Shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, carried out a purge against his subordinate Taira no Yoritsuna. In what is referred to as the Heizen Gate Incident, Yoritsuna and 90 of his followers were killed.
The Hōjō regency however continued until Nitta Yoshisada destroyed it in 1333 at the Siege of Kamakura. It was under the regency that Kamakura acquired many of its best and most prestigious temples and shrines, for example Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji, Jufuku-ji, Jōchi-ji, and Zeniarai Benten Shrine. The Hōjō family crest in the city is therefore still ubiquitous.
From the middle of the thirteenth century, the fact that the vassals (the gokenin) were allowed to become de facto owners of the land they administered, coupled to the custom that all gokenin children could inherit, led to the parcelization of the land and to a consequent weakening of the shogunate. This, and not lack of legitimacy, was the primary cause of the Hōjō's fall.
According to The Institute for Research on World-Systems, Kamakura was the 4th largest city in the world in 1250 AD, with 200,000 people, and Japan's largest, eclipsing Kyoto by 1200 AD. Yet, despite Kamakura's annihilation of Kyoto-based political and military power at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, and the failure of the Emperor to free himself from Kamakura's control during the Jōkyū War, Takahashi (2005) has questioned whether Kamakura's nationwide political hegemony actually existed. Takahashi claims that if Kamakura ruled the Kantō, not only was the Emperor in fact still the ruler of Kansai, but during this period the city was in many ways politically and administratively still under the ancient capital of Kyoto. Kamakura was simply a rival center of political, economic and cultural power in a country that had Kyoto as its capital.
Nichiren in Kamakura
Kamakura is known among Buddhists for having been the cradle of Nichiren Buddhism during the 13th century. Founder Nichiren was not a native; he was born in Awa Province, in today's Chiba Prefecture. But it was only natural for a preacher to come here because the city was the political centre of the country at the time. Nichiren settled down in a straw hut in the Matsubagayatsu (literally transl. pine needle valley) district, where three temples (Ankokuron-ji, Myōhō–ji, and Chōshō-ji), have been fighting for centuries for the honour of being the true heir of the master. During his turbulent life Nichiren came and went, but Kamakura always remained at the heart of his religious activities. It is here that, when he was about to be executed by the Hōjō Regent for being a troublemaker, he was allegedly saved by a miracle; it is also in Kamakura that he wrote his famous Risshō Ankoku Ron (立正安国論), or 'Treatise on Peace and Righteousness', and that legend says he was rescued and fed by monkeys. Kamakura is also where he preached.
Some Kamakura locations important to Nichiren Buddhism are:
- The three temples in Matsubagayatsu
Ankokuron-ji claims to have on its grounds the cave where the master, with the help of a white monkey, hid from his persecutors (however Hosshō-ji in Zushi's Hisagi district makes the same claim, and with a better historical basis). Within Ankokuron-ji lie also the spot where Nichiren used to meditate while admiring Mount Fuji, the place where his disciple Nichiro was cremated, and the cave where he is supposed to have written his Risshō Ankoku Ron.
Nearby Myōhō–ji (also called Koke-dera or 'Temple of Moss'), a much smaller temple, was erected in an area where Nichiren had his home for 19 years.
The third Nichiren temple in Nagoe, Chōshō-ji, also claims to lie on the very spot where it all started.