A decline in food production, the growth of the population, and competition for resources among the great families all led to the gradual decline of Fujiwara power and gave rise to military disturbances in the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries.

Members of the Fujiwara, Taira, and Minamoto families—all of whom have descended from the imperial family—attack one another, claim control over vast tracts of conquered land, set up rival regimes, and generally upset the peace.

The Fujiwara had controlled the throne until the reign of Emperor Go-Sanjō (1068-1073), the first emperor not born of a Fujiwara mother since the ninth century.

Go-Sanjo, determined to restore imperial control through strong personal rule, had implemented reforms to curb Fujiwara influence.

H had also established an office to compile and validate estate records with the aim of reasserting central control.

Many shōen were not properly certified, and large landholders, like the Fujiwara, feel threatened with the loss of their lands.

Go-Sanjo had also established the Incho, or Office of the Cloistered Emperor, which will be held by a succession of emperors who abdicate to devote themselves to behind-the-scenes governance, or insei.

The Incho has filled the void left by the decline of Fujiwara power.

Rather than being banished, the Fujiwara have mostly been retained in their old positions of civil dictator and minister of the center while being bypassed in decision making.

In time, many of the Fujiwara will be replaced, mostly by members of the rising Minamoto family.

While the Fujiwara fall into disputes among themselves and formed northern and southern factions, the insei system allows the paternal line of the imperial family to gain influence over the throne.

The period from 1086 to 1156 is the age of supremacy of the Incho and of the rise of the military class throughout the country.

Military might rather than civil authority dominates the government.

Minamoto no Yoshiie, named governor of Japan’s northern province of Mutsu in 1083, had taken it upon himself, without orders from the Imperial Court, to bring some peace and order to the region.

A series of disputes between Kiyohara no Masahira, Narihira, and Iehira over leadership of Mutsu’s Kiyowara cla had turned to violence.

Yoshiie intervenes in 1086 to stop the constant fighting between the leaders of the many Kiyohara branches, unsuccessfully besieging the fort where Iyehira and his Kiyowara rebels have withdrawn for the winter.

Intense cold and hunger decimates Yoshiie’s forces, forcing the survivors to retreat.

A struggle for succession in mid-twelfth century Japan gives the Fujiwara an opportunity to regain their former power.

Fujiwara Yorinaga sides with the retired emperor in a violent battle in 1158 against the heir apparent, who is supported by the Taira and Minamoto.

In the end, the Fujiwara are destroyed, the old system of government supplanted, and the inset system left powerless as bushi take control of court affairs, marking a turning point in Japanese history.

Within a year, the Taira and Minamoto clash and a twenty-year period of Taira ascendancy begins.

The Taira are seduced by court life and ignore problems in the provinces.

Finally, Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-99) rises from his headquarters at Kamakura (in the Kanto region, southwest of modern Tokyo) to defeat the Taira, and with them the child emperor they control, in the Genpei War (1180-85).

Deepening pessimism in Japan's time of disunity and violence increases the appeal of the search for salvation.

Kamakura is the age of the great popularization of Buddhism with two new sects, Jodo (Pure Land) and Zen (Meditation), dominating the period.

The old Heian sects had been quite esoteric and more appealing to intellectuals than to the masses.

The Mount Hiei monasteries have become politically powerful but appeal primarily to those capable of systematic study of the sect's teachings.

This situation gives rise to the Jodo sect, based on unconditional faith and devotion and prayer to Amida Buddha.

Zen rejects all temporal and scriptural authority, stressing moral character rather than intellectual attainments, an emphasis that appeals to the military class

Zen masters, regarded as embodiments of truth, are turned to by growing numbers of the military class.

Japanese literature of this time reflects the unsettled nature of the period, as might be expected.

The Hojoki (An Account of My Hut) describes the turmoil of the period in terms of the Buddhist concepts of impermanance and the vanity of human projects.

The Heike monogatari (Tale of the Heike) narrates the rise and fall of the Taira (also known as the Heike), replete with tales of wars and samurai deeds.

A second literary mainstream is the continuation of anthologies of poetry in the Shin kokinshu wakashu (New Collection of Ancient and Modern Times), of which twenty volumes are produced between 1201 and 1205.

The Hōjō regency oversees several significant administrative achievements.

The Council of State is established in 1225, providing opportunities for other military lords to exercise judicial and legislative authority at Kamakura.

The Hōjō regent presides over the council, which is a successful form of collective leadership.

The adoption of Japan's first military code of law—the Joei Code—in 1232 reflects the profound transition from court to militarized society.

Legal practices in Kyoto are still based on five hundred-year-old Confucian principles, whereas the Joei Code is a highly legalistic document that stresses the duties of stewards and constables, provides means for settling land disputes, and establishes rules governing inheritances.

It is clear and concise, stipulates punishments for violators of its conditions, and will remain in effect for the next six hundred and thirty-five years.

Strains emerge between Kyoto and Kamakura, with the protector of the emperor a figurehead himself, and in 1221 a war—the Jokyu Incident—breaks out between the cloistered emperor and the Hōjō regent.

The Hōjō forces easily win the war, and the imperial court is brought under direct bakufu control.

The shogun's constables gain greater civil powers, and the court is obliged to seek Kamakura 's approval for all of its actions.

Although deprived of political power, the court is allowed to retain extensive estates with which to sustain the imperial splendor the bakufu needs to help sanction its rule.

Despite a strong beginning, Yoritomo fails to consolidate the leadership of his family on a lasting basis.

Intrafamily contention have long existed within the Minamoto, although Yoritomo has eliminated most serious challengers to his authority.

When he dies suddenly in 1199, his son Yoriie becomes shogun and nominal head of the Minamoto, but Yoriie is unable to control the other eastern bushi families.

By the early thirteenth century, a regency has been established for the shogun by his maternal grandparents—members of the Hōjō family, a branch of the Taira that had had allied itself with the Minamoto in 1180.

Under the Hōjō, the bakufu become powerless, and the shogun, often a member of the Fujiwara family or even an imperial prince, is merely a figurehead.

Minamoto Yoritomo, once he has consolidated his power, establishes a new government at his family home in Kamakura.

He calls his government a bakufu (tent government), but because he is given the title sett taishogun by the emperor, it is often referred to in Western literature as the shogunate.

Yoritomo follows the Fujiwara form of house government and has an administrative board, a board of retainers, and a board of inquiry.

After confiscating Taira estates in central and western Japan, he has the imperial court appoint stewards for the estates and constables for the provinces.

As shogun, Yoritomo is both the steward and the constable- general.

The Kamakura bakufu is not a national regime, however, and although it controls large tracts of land, there is strong resistance to the stewards.

The regime continues warfare against the Fujiwara in the north, but never brings either the north or the west under complete military control.

The old court resides in Kyoto, continuing to hold the land over which it has jurisdiction, while newly organized military families are attracted to Kamakura.

The Kamakura period (1185-1333) marks the transition to the Japanese "medieval" era, a nearly seven hundred-year period in which the emperor, the court, and the traditional central government are left intact, but are largely relegated to ceremonial functions.

Civil, military, and judicial matters are controlled by the bushi class, the most powerful of whom is the de facto national ruler.

The term feudalism is generally used to describe this period, being accepted by scholars as applicable to medieval Japan as well as medieval Europe.

Both had land-based economies, vestiges of a previously centralized state, and a concentration of advanced military technologies in the hands of a specialized fighting class.

Lords require the loyal services of vassals, who are rewarded with fiefs of their own.

The fief holders exercise local military rule and public power related to the holding of land.

This period in Japan differs from the old shoen system in its pervasive military emphasis.

Yoritomo’s establishment, in 1185, of a new government at his family home in Kamakura, independent from the emperor and his Heian bureaucracy, inaugurates Japan’s Kamakura period, which marks the transition to land-based economies and a concentration of advanced military technologies in the hands of a specialized fighting class.

Lords require the loyal services of vassals, who are rewarded with fiefs of their own.

The fief holders exercise local military rule.

Yoritomo calls his government a bakufu (tent government), but because he is given the ancient high military title Seii Tai-shōgun by the Emperor, the government is often referred to in Western literature as the shogunate.

Yoritomo follows the Fujiwara form of house government and has an administrative board (Mandokoro), a board of retainers (Samurai-dokoro), and a board of inquiry (Monchūjo).