go-saga

Updated: May 14, 2025

In framing this curious instrument, Go-Saga doubtless designed to gild the pill of permanent exclusion from the seats of power, believing confidently that the Imperial succession would be secured to Kameyama and his direct descendants. This anticipation proved correct.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

86th " Go-Horikawa 1221-1232 87th " Shijo 1233-1242 88th " Go-Saga 1243-1246 Here are seen twelve consecutive Emperors whose united reigns covered a period of ninety-one years, being an average of seven and one-half years, approximately.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The former was only three years old when he became nominal sovereign, and, after a reign of thirteen years, he was compelled to make way for his father's favourite, Kameyama, who reigned from 1259 to 1274. The cloistered Emperor, Go-Saga, abdicating after a reign of four years, conducted the administration according to the camera system during twenty-six years.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

It has been shown that Go-Horikawa received the purple practically from the hands of the Hojo in the sequel of the Shokyu disturbance, and the same is true of Go-Saga, he having been nominated from Kamakura in preference to a son of Juntoku, whose complicity in that disturbance had been notorious.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

In the normal order of things the cloistered Emperor Go-Fukakusa would have succeeded to the administrative place occupied by Go-Saga, and a large body of courtiers, whose chances of promotion and emolument depended upon that arrangement, bitterly resented the innovation. Go-Fukakusa declared that he would leave his palace and enter a monastery were such a wrong done to his children.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

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.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Like Go-Toba, he cherished the hope of seeing the Imperial Court released from the Bakufu shackles, and to that end the alert, enterprising Kameyama seemed better suited than the dull, resourceless Takakura, just as in Go-Toba's eyes Juntoku had appeared preferable to Tsuchimikado. Dying in 1272, Go-Saga left a will with injunctions that it should be opened in fifty days.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Now it happened that, in 1252, a conspiracy against Go-Saga was found to have been fomented by the head of that branch of the Fujiwara family from which the Kamakura shoguns were taken. The conspiracy was a thing of the past and so were its principal fomenters, but it served as a conclusive reason for not creating another Fujiwara shogun.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era