IV Kamakura
Kamakura is a real catch it if you can reference to history, but despite the fact that most haven’t heard of it, it has a much more secure position on the list of the capitals of Japan than Osaka does. It was the real center of Japan’s political administration for a period from the 1100s until the mid 1300s, a period which included the successful resistance to the Mongol invasions with the help of the kamikaze, the divine wind. In other words: hey Mongols, before sailing out, check the weather!
When Kamakura was founded, it was cheerfully located at the ass end of nowhere. It’s a port city on the Kanto plain, which at the time was like America moving its capital to the Colorado frontier during the 1850s. That happened for a couple of good reasons. The system of an emperor retiring his ritual throne duties but keeping power had broken down into control by the Fujiwara clan of court nobles. But a number of rising competing clans descended from the Imperial clans themselves had risen up.
One of the reasons the Imperial line has lasted is they never lacked for heirs. Emperors had multiple wives, dozens of kids, and their brothers would have dozens of kids of their own. The line was safe, but that created risks of its own: too many heirs can be dangerous. If some outsider clan wants to take power, they can find some unhappy prince, make him the nominal leader of their cause, and toss out the current emperor. They can crown their purchased prince, and now they’re set and perfectly legitimate. So the Imperial clan would sometimes prune its ranks. They’d take a bunch of spare sons of lower-ranked concubines every now and then, and the emperor would “grant” them clan names. They’d enjoy high rank, and the clans formed — the Taira, the Minamoto, the Tachibana — became the nucleus of the new samurai military caste. But they’d never be emperors — remember, the Imperial clan had no name, so these nephews and younger sons were now no longer princes, or Imperial at all.
But they were still powerful, privileged and ambitious. And, as we’ve said, the retired emperor had proved that you didn’t need to be an emperor to exercise power. If a retired emperor could be the real power, why not an ex-prince? Or a powerful noble clan head? Or a military leader? Cue a war! In the aftermath, the Minamoto clan won out, winning the new title of Shogun, and seated their power around their own clan capital in the East. That proved useful to avoid and sideline the court intrigues and politics. The warrior caste was nominally subordinate to the throne, and kept up that pretense. If they were in Kyoto, they’d have to publicly defer to the higher rank of the emperor. So the Shogun just never went to Kyoto. But they too were not immune to power being flexible. The original Shogun’s grandson inherited young, which is always dangerous, and his rule was entrusted to a regent from the Hojo clan. The Hojo, somehow, never quite got around to restoring power to the main Minamoto line, and they were the real rulers of Japan for the Kamakura era.
So to recap, when the Mongols invaded, Japan was ruled by an Emperor (tenno), who exercised no political power. The emperor had a Fujiwara regent (sessho) a once powerful office that ruled “for” the tenno, but now was also sidelined. He also had a Minamoto clan shogun, who was titular head of the military caste. But the shogun had no more power either. The shogun now had a Hojo clan regent (shikken), and that guy was the one who actually called the shots against Genghis’s generals, despite being officially of mid-tier rank both on the Imperial court rank system and any org chart.
I know this is sounds insane on face — why keep so many high ranking nobodies around for funsies? A lot of it was about legitimacy; if you co-opt the power of the tenno but leave him in office, the country as a whole doesn’t notice or care like they would if you replaced him. And Japan is not unique in this regard; ancient societies often constrained their divine rulers and their theoretically unlimited powers with ritual obligations. If the sacred king can execute anyone or appropriate anything in sight, keep out of his sight. His Holy feet may not be polluted by touching the soil outside the sacred palace! If it helps, make sure he was always a governable child. That way you can exercise the power of the emperor without losing the stored legitimacy of the traditional clan.
The label primitive may tempt you here. But how are Charles III and his dukes and earls different? Or the half dozen other remaining powerless monarchs in modern Europe?
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Kamakura today is an appendage of the massive Tokyo metro. You take a train from there, past Haneda airport down to the southern coastline. Kamakura has none of that former-capital we’re-better-than-you feel you might pick up in Kyoto — it was last a capital in the 1300s. But that period coincides with the introduction of the Chan school of Buddhism from China, more famously rendered in Japanese as Zen. Zen temples ring the bowl of the city, providing stunning views of the town and the ocean beyond. It’s worth the shlep up to see the views. The town is much smaller than the other four; which makes it an easier place to wander around and find a cup of coffee or a lunch. The crowd does run to tourism, but not as heavily as you’ll find at the big sites in Kyoto.
Funnily enough, Zen is not the most prominent school of Buddhism in Japan — Jodo Shinshu is. Zen can’t claim even 10% of the whole. It did, however, market itself in the West better, stripping down its practice to a spare, meditation and insight oriented approach that was lighter on deities and potential blasphemies for a Christian audience. It’s a type of practice that feels compatible with monotheistic Western faiths. That’s no reason to skip Kamakura — just know that we may think of Zen as the “real Japanese Buddhism” at some level, but most Buddhists don’t.
I’m not much of a Christian, but I do admit there’s a funny disorientation for me when I go to shrines and temples here. There are temples as spare as a Calvinist stone chapel, and others as maximally decorated as the San Juan de Dios in Granada — where if it can be gold-leafed, it will be gold-leafed. All are unmistakably places for spiritual observation, but at the same time they’re so utterly different. The carved figures have facial expressions you’d never find in a Catholic church. Some are carved in repetitive rows that are unfamiliar, for purposes unknown to me. The colors run heavily to bright red. The layout feels wrong: many are built for continuous individual use, not oriented to mass collective ceremonies. Many rituals are conducted only by the priests or monks, or are held standing out in the courtyard; there’s no rows and rows of seats here for an obedient congregation to gather and be preached at.
So they’re beautiful, and fascinating, but it doesn’t feel right. We’re all subject to more influence of our own tradition than we realize. However, pursuing that feeling of wrongness is a good reason to travel. It helps you question things that deserve it. Its good for everyone, but especially the citizens of a giant country like America, to feel like a foreigner sometimes.
After seeing the temples and the town, there’s a ancient rickety little trolley like that you can pack yourself into and visit Enoshima Island. It’ll drop you on the mainland, and then you either bus or shlep along the long causeway out to the island. Be prepared to secure your hats, because the wind can whip right along the causeway with a fury. But the island itself is delightful; a forested over warren of hills, the whole island is a shrine to Benzaiten, the kami of music and entertainment. By day, the island has the closest sandy beaches to Tokyo — not normally much of a draw for me directly, since I never travel this far just to go to a beach when I’m ten miles from one at home. But it’s sometimes nice to get a walk in an open place like this if you’ve timed out on the crowds in Tokyo. However, if you’re not motivated by that, come towards the end of the day. You’ll find a shrine complex with buildings scattered everywhere, mildly overpriced restaurants with stunning views, and dozens of fantastic sunset angles on Mount Fuji across the bay.