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Updated: May 29, 2025
It is not impossible that the idea of rebelling, sooner or later, against the Bakufu had begun to germinate in the mind of Go-Toba at that date, but the probability is that, in laying aside the sceptre, his dominant aim was to enjoy the sweets of power without its responsibilities, and to obtain leisure for pursuing polite accomplishments in which he excelled.
It was at the neighbouring village, of which Suwa-Dai-Myojin seems to be the ujigami, that the Emperor Go-Toba is said to have dwelt, in the house of the Choja Shikekuro. The Shikekuro homestead remains, and still belongs to the Choja'sa descendants, but they have become very poor.
He had been chosen by lot from among three sons of Go-Toba, but the choice displeased the latter, and in 1210, Tsuchimikado, then in his fifteenth year, was compelled to abdicate in favour of his younger brother, Juntoku, aged thirteen, the eighty-fourth occupant of the throne.
That would have invested the Kamakura Government with new dignity in the eyes of the nation. But the ex-Emperor, Go-Toba, upon whom it devolved to decide the fate of this petition, rejected it incontinently. His Majesty, as will presently be seen, was seeking to contrive the downfall of the Bakufu, and the idea of associating one of his own sons with its fortunes must have revolted him.
Which I subsequently ascertained to be the case. For some time I could find no one among my Japanese acquaintances to give me any information about Oki, beyond the fact that in ancient times it had been a place of banishment for the Emperors Go-Daigo and Go-Toba, dethroned by military usurpers, and this I already knew.
Careful perusal of the well-known work, Masukagami, shows that from year's end to year's end the same pastimes were enjoyed, the same studies pursued The composition of poetry took precedence of everything. Eminent among the poetasters of the twelfth century was the Emperor Go-Toba.
It was then that Go-Toba contrived the abdication of his son, Juntoku, a young man of twenty-four, possessing, apparently, all the qualities that make for success in war, and thereafter an Imperial decree deprived Yoshitoki of his offices and declared him a rebel. The die was now cast. Troops were summoned from all parts of the Empire to attack Kamakura, and a motley crowd mustered in Kyoto.
It will suffice to note here, however, that his abdication was altogether voluntary. Ascending the throne in 1184, at the age of four, he had passed the next eight years as a mere puppet manipulated by his grandfather, Go-Shirakawa, the cloistered Emperor, and on the latter's death in 1192, Go-Toba fell into many of the faults of youth.
The land-steward of this estate treated its new owner, Kamegiku, with contumely, and Go-Toba was sufficiently infatuated to lodge a protest, which elicited from Kamakura an unceremonious negative. One of the flagrant abuses of the time was the sale of offices to Court ladies, and the Bakufu's attitude in the affair of the Settsu estates amounted to an indirect condemnation of such evil practices.
The Emperor Go-Toba is known to have worked at sword-making in a smithy of his own. Religious rites were practised during the forging of a blade down to modern times.... All the principal crafts had guilds; and, as a general rule, trades were hereditary. There are good historical grounds for supposing that the ancestors of the Shokunin were mostly Koreans and Chinese.
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