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The new shogun, Yoshinori, belonged to a very different category of men from his immediate predecessors. He conquered the Kitabatake family in Ise; repressed the remnants of the Southern Court league; crushed the military monks by capturing Nara and Hiei-zan; put an end finally to Kamakura's intrigues; obtained control of the west, and quelled his enemies in all directions.
But before launching this formidable host, Kublai made a final effort to compass his end without fighting. In 1280, he sent another embassy to Japan, announcing the complete overthrow of the Sung dynasty, and summoning the Island Empire to enter into friendly relations. Kamakura's answer was to order the execution of the envoys at the place where they had landed, Hakata in Chikuzen.
The path turned; and suddenly, straight in front of them, they saw the God the Great Buddha the immense bronze statue which has survived from the days of Kamakura's sovereignty. The bowed head and the broad shoulders were outlined against the blue and starry sky; against the shadow of the woods the body, almost invisible, could be dimly divined.
Kamakura's answer was to decapitate the five leaders of the mission and to pillory their heads outside the city. Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable than the calm confidence shown at this crisis by the Bakufu regent, Tokimune. His country's annalists ascribe that mood to faith in the doctrines of the Zen sect of Buddhism; faith which he shared with his father, Tokiyori, during the latter's life.
Nominally, this arrangement was a mark of deference to the testament of Go-Saga, but in reality it was an astute device to weaken the authority of the Court by dividing it into rival factions. Kamakura's fiat received peaceful acquiescence at first.
It was now the time when Kamakura's mischievous potentialities had been finally destroyed, and to commemorate the event, entertainments in the shogun's honour were organized by the heads of the great military families. On the 6th of August, 1441, it fell to Akamatsu Mitsusuke to act as his host.
During the space of five years this plot escaped Kamakura's attention. But, in 1331, the Bakufu, becoming suspicious, laid hands on several of the plotters and, subjecting them to judicial examination after the merciless fashion of the age, soon elicited a part, at any rate, of the truth.
It may here be noted that, although several of the Taira leaders who took the field against the Minamoto were killed in the campaign or executed or exiled after it, the punitory measures adopted by Yoritomo were not by any means wholesale. To be a Taira did not necessarily involve Kamakura's enmity.
In truth, from an early period of Kamakura's tenure by an Ashikaga governor-general of the Kwanto, there had been an ambition to transfer the office of shogun from the Kyoto to the Kamakura branch of the family.
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