By the twelfth century the court in Kyoto still issued edicts, but in the provinces the men who mattered carried bows and rode horses. These warriors, called bushi or samurai ("those who serve"), began as guards and estate managers for nobles. Within a few generations they ran the country.

The Genpei War

Two great warrior clans, the Taira and the Minamoto, both claimed descent from emperors. In the 1160s Taira no Kiyomori rose to dominate the court, even placing his infant grandson on the throne. In 1180 the Minamoto rebelled, and five years of fighting known as the Genpei War followed. The war ended at Dan-no-ura, a sea battle in the strait between Honshu and Kyushu, in 1185. As the Taira fleet collapsed, Kiyomori's widow leapt into the waves holding the child emperor Antoku, who drowned. The story of the Taira's fall became the Tale of the Heike, recited for centuries by blind lute players, which turned the war into a lesson on the Buddhist idea that all glory passes.

Yoritomo and the shogunate

The victor, Minamoto no Yoritomo, did not move to Kyoto. He based his government at Kamakura, in eastern Japan, among the warrior families who supported him. With the court's grudging consent, he appointed his own military governors to the provinces and stewards to the estates, giving his followers income and authority across the country. In 1192 he received the title shogun, short for "great general who subdues the barbarians." His regime came to be called the bakufu, a word that originally meant a general's tent headquarters. Japan now had two centers of authority: an imperial court that granted titles and performed rituals, and a warrior government that kept order and settled disputes. This dual arrangement lasted, in changing forms, until 1868.

The Hojo regents

Yoritomo died in 1199, and his sons were weak or murdered. Power passed to the Hojo family, his widow's relatives, who ruled as regents for figurehead shoguns. His widow, Hojo Masako, became a political force in her own right, remembered as the "nun shogun." In 1221 the retired emperor Go-Toba called on warriors to overthrow Kamakura; Masako rallied them to the shogunate, and Go-Toba was defeated and exiled. In 1232 the regent Hojo Yasutoki issued the Goseibai Shikimoku, a law code for warriors of 51 articles. It aimed to settle land disputes fairly, drew on warrior custom rather than Chinese law, and recognized that women could inherit and hold property, even serving as stewards.

The Mongol invasions

Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol empire and of China, demanded that Japan submit. Kamakura refused. In 1274 and again in 1281, Mongol, Korean and Chinese forces landed in northern Kyushu. Japanese warriors fought hard, and a defensive wall built along Hakata Bay after the first attack slowed the second. Both times, storms helped destroy the invading fleets. Temples and shrines claimed that their prayers had summoned these winds, and the word kamikaze, "divine wind," first referred to the storms that struck the Mongol fleets. Underwater archaeologists have since found wrecks off Takashima suggesting that many ships of 1281 were river craft, hastily built and badly suited to open sea. Victory brought a problem. In earlier wars, the winners were paid in land taken from losers, but this time the shogunate had no captured land to reward its warriors. Debts and resentment spread, and loyalty to Kamakura weakened.

New paths in Buddhism

Disorder made many feel they lived in a degenerate age. Teachers offered simpler routes to salvation. Honen taught that sincerely calling on the name of Amida Buddha brings rebirth in the Pure Land, a paradise open to anyone, rich or poor. His follower Shinran went further, holding that faith alone, not effort, saves, and he married openly as a monk. Nichiren preached that only the Lotus Sutra held the truth and attacked rival sects. Zen, brought from China by Eisai and Dogen, stressed seated meditation and found patrons among warriors. The popular image of the samurai as bound by a strict code of "bushido" owes much to much later writers, especially Nitobe Inazo's English book Bushido of 1899. Medieval warriors valued loyalty and courage, but they also switched sides when it paid.

Worked example: Takezaki Suenaga's scroll

In 1274 a minor warrior from Kyushu named Takezaki Suenaga charged the Mongols and was wounded. When no reward came, he rode some 1,000 kilometers to Kamakura in 1275 and pressed his case before a shogunal official, who granted him a horse and a stewardship. Years later he commissioned a pair of illustrated scrolls showing his deeds in both invasions, with notes naming witnesses. Read as a source, the scrolls show Mongol tactics, exploding bombs and Japanese armor in vivid detail. Read for their purpose, they show something else: a warrior recording his service to secure income for his family. The whole system of loyalty rested on this exchange of service for reward. When there was nothing left to give, the bond frayed, which helps explain why the Kamakura regime fell only fifty years after its greatest triumph.