Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 12, 2025
It was at this time, also, that the military families of the Kwanto in general and of Kamakura in particular began to find their incomes distressingly inadequate to meet the greatly increased and constantly increasing outlays that resulted from following the costly customs of Kyoto as reflected at the shogun's palace.
Ujitsuna proved himself a worthy son of Soun, but much had still to be accomplished before the Kwanto was fully won. Among the eight provinces, two, Awa and Kazusa, which looked across the sea to Odawara, were under the firm sway of the Satomi family one of the "eight generals" of the Kwanto and not until 1538 could the Hojo chief find an opportunity to crush this strong sept.
Whatever sympathy might have been felt in Kyoto with the Hojo family was forfeited by this procedure, and in March, 1590, an army of over two hundred thousand men was set in motion for the Kwanto. Hideyoshi's troops moved in three columns.
In February, 1605, the Tokugawa chief's return to Kyoto from the Kwanto capital was made the occasion of a great military display. Both Ieyasu and Hidetada travelled at the same time with a following of 170,000 soldiers, who were encamped outside the city whence they marched in, ten thousand daily, during seventeen consecutive days.
In short, eight provinces of the Kwanto responded like an echo to Yoritomo's call, and, by the time he had made his circuit of Yedo Bay, some twenty-five thousand men were marshalled under his standard.
There followed another indecisive battle at Kawanaka-jima, and thereafter renewed attacks upon the Hojo, whose expulsion from the Kwanto devolved on Kenshin as kwanryo. But the results were always vague: the Hojo refrained from final resistance, and Shingen created a diversion. The chief sufferers were the provinces of the Kwanto, a scene of perpetual battle.
So long did they hesitate in view of the might of Odawara, that the expression "Odawara-hyogi" passed into the language as a synonym for reluctance; and when at length they moved to the attack with eighty thousand men, Hojo Ujiyasu, at the head of a mere fraction of that number, inflicted a defeat which settled the supremacy of the Kwanto.
He seized the domains of the Nitta family in the Kwanto and distributed them among his own followers; he caused his brother, Tadayoshi, to send letters inviting the adherence of many bushi; he addressed to the Throne a memorial impeaching Yoshisada on the ground that, whereas the latter's military successes had been the outcome entirely of opportunities furnished by the prowess of the Ashikaga, he did not hesitate to slander Takauji to the sovereign, and he asked for an Imperial commission to destroy the Nitta leader, whom he dubbed a "national thief."
Marshalling arguments based chiefly on the advisability of averting an armed struggle, he persuaded the lady Masa to endorse a compromise, namely, that to Sanetomo should be given the office of land-steward in thirty-eight provinces of the Kwansai; while to Ichiman should be secured the title of shogun and the offices of lord high constable and land-steward in twenty-eight provinces of the Kwanto.
Kamakura certainly has topographical advantages. It is surrounded by mountains except on one face, which is washed by the sea. But this feature does not seem to have counted so much in Yoritomo's eyes as the fact that his father, Yoshitomo, had chosen Kamakura as a place of residence when he exercised military sway in the Kwanto, and Yoritomo wished to preserve the tradition of Minamoto power.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking