Kamakura & Muromachi: The First Shogunate and the Mongol Storm

Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, wanted to incorporate Japan into his empire. What happened next was remembered entirely differently by the two sides. The Japanese warriors fought for two months in grueling coastal defenses. Then a typhoon struck. Hundreds of Mongol ships sank. Tens of thousands of soldiers drowned. The survivors withdrew.

The Buddhist monasteries immediately declared that they had summoned the decisive Kamikaze — the Divine Wind — through their prayers. The warriors demanded land as a reward for their service. Both sides got what they wanted — and that became the beginning of the end of the first shogunate.

Yoritomo and the first bakufu: A military regime as a judicial authority

Minamoto no Yoritomo won the Genpei War — and refused to govern from the capital. In the year 1192, the emperor formally appointed him Seii Taishōgun. The bakufu — literally “tent government” — was the first time in Japanese history that warriors ruled openly and institutionally.

What Yoritomo established was above all an authority for adjudication. The core promise was as plain as it was revolutionary: whoever followed him would have his landholdings guaranteed — not through marriage politics or court favor, but through the word of a man one could trust because he had won. This guarantee was the reason why warriors from all of Japan swore allegiance to him. It was also the reason why the system collapsed — when it could no longer keep the promise.

Yoritomo’s own rule lasted only seven years. His sons were outmaneuvered by the Hōjō — the family of Yoritomo’s wife Masako, whom historians call the “nun shogun” because she effectively controlled the bakufu after Yoritomo’s death. By 1226, the Hōjō had established the title of Shikken (regent). Three levels of proxy rule stacked one upon another.

The Mongol storm: When Japan survived the unthinkable

In October 1274, Mongol ships appeared off Hakata in Kyushu. The Mongol army used drum-supported mass attacks, fire bombs (tetsuhau), and poisoned arrows. The first invasion was ended by a rising storm.

Afterward, Japan built a protective wall along the Bay of Hakata — one of the largest military infrastructure projects in Japanese history. The second invasion in 1281 was the largest: over 140,000 soldiers on around 4,400 ships. The Japanese defense held for a month. Then the typhoon arrived — the Kamikaze.

What followed was not a triumph. It was a fiscal disaster. The bakufu had mobilized warriors from across the country, who now demanded rewards. In a system based on land grants as the currency of loyalty, there was a fundamental problem: no enemy land had been conquered. The foundation of the system — the promise to guarantee landholdings — was something the bakufu could no longer keep. Impoverished vassals, disappointed warriors, overstretched finances.

The end of Kamakura: Emperor Go-Daigo and the nemesis of the Hōjō

Emperor Go-Daigo (1288–1339) recognized that the hour of the Kamakura bakufu had come. In 1331 he called for open resistance. Ashikaga Takauji, a Hōjō vassal, was sent out to fight the rebels — and joined them instead. In 1333, the Kamakura bakufu fell after 141 years.

Emperor Go-Daigo ruled directly for three years — the Kemmu Restoration. It failed due to his own inexperience and the resistance of the warriors. Ashikaga Takauji drove him out again in 1336 and founded the second shogunate. The Muromachi bakufu.

The Muromachi shogunate: Power without enforcement

Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), the third shogun, was the high point: for the first time since the Heian period, he reunited civil and military authority in a single hand, maintained the China trade monopoly, had the Golden Pavilion built, and patronized Nō theater and the tea ceremony.

What this high point concealed was the fundamental weakness of the system: the Ashikaga ruled through shugo — provincial governors who were originally shogunate representatives and increasingly developed into autonomous dynasties. Legal authority without enforcement is decoration.

The Muromachi bakufu was, despite its weakness, a cultural heyday: Nō theater, tea ceremony, ikebana, ink painting — all of these owe their classical form to the Muromachi age. It is a curious historical fact: the politically weakest era of samurai history was their culturally richest.

The architecture of medieval war: What wounds reveal

Thomas Conlan analyzed 1,302 surviving gunchūjō — wound reports that samurai submitted in order to obtain rewards — from the wars of the 14th century. His finding: 72 percent of all wounds came from arrows. Swords: about 20 percent. No ritualized single combats, no elegant swordsmen — hails of arrows, ambushes, group formations.

What the wound reports further show: loyalty was a transaction. A samurai submitted his wound report and expected land in return. Samurai switched sides when rewards failed to materialize. The notion of the blindly loyal vassal is a later literary construction.

The Ōnin War: The end of an epoch

In the year 1467, two factions of the Ashikaga court began to quarrel over a successor to the throne. What began as a court intrigue transformed within months into open war in the streets of Kyoto. The Ōnin War lasted eleven years. When it ended — not through victory, but through the bleeding-out of both sides — large parts of Kyoto were in ashes.

The Ōnin War marks the end of the Kamakura-Muromachi era. The Sengoku Jidai — the period of the warring provinces — had begun. The bakufu existed formally until 1573, when Oda Nobunaga drove the last Ashikaga shogun out of Kyoto. In effect, it had ceased to govern at the latest after the Ōnin War.

Frequently asked questions

What is a bakufu?

Bakufu literally means “tent government.” As a term for the shogunate government, it denotes a parallel center of power alongside the imperial court in Kyoto. The bakufu effectively governed Japan through control over warrior networks and landholdings.

Why did the Kamakura bakufu fail after the Mongol wars?

The bakufu system was based on land grants as the currency of reward. In repelling the Mongols, no enemy land was conquered — only one’s own was defended. Warriors could not be compensated. The resulting dissatisfaction undermined the system’s basis of loyalty.

What was the Kamikaze really?

The “Divine Wind” denotes two typhoons that struck Mongol invasion fleets in 1274 and 1281. Japanese coastal defense — especially the stone wall at Hakata — was a significant factor in the resistance. The Buddhist interpretation as a divine intervention summoned through prayer served political purposes.

What was the cultural legacy of the Muromachi period?

Nō theater, tea ceremony, ikebana, ink painting, Zen gardens. Shogun Yoshimitsu had the Golden Pavilion built. The aesthetic concepts of wabi, sabi, and yūgen stemmed from this period of paradoxical synthesis of political decay and cultural flourishing.

Visit the Samurai Museum Berlin

Display case C02V preserves objects from the Kamakura epoch, including an Ō-yoroi armor. Display case C03V shows a Hoshi Kabuto from the Kamakura period. Display case C04V presents a Haramaki armor from the late Muromachi period. Open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Auguststraße 68, Berlin-Mitte.

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List of sources

Yamamura, Kōzō (ed.) (1990): The Cambridge History of Japan, Vol. 3: Medieval Japan. Cambridge University Press.
Conlan, Thomas D. (2003): State of War. University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies.
Friday, Karl F. (2004): Samurai, Warfare and the State. Routledge.
Samurai Museum Berlin (2021): Armours of the Samurai.