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This could mean only a peril greater than that of the Tartar invasion in the days of Hojo Tokimune, when the people had prayed to the gods for help, and the Emperor himself, at Ise, had besought the spirits of his fathers.

The next four, however, from Yasutoki down to Tokimune, are distinctly entitled to a high place in the pages of history. *It is recorded that the first half of every month in Kamakura was devoted to judicial proceedings, and that at the gate of the Record Office there was hung a bell, by striking which a suitor or petitioner could count on immediate attention.

On one occasion , a Korean vessel carried off two Japanese from Tsushima and sent them to Peking. There, Kublai treated them kindly, showed them his palace as well as a parade of his troops, and sent them home to tell what they had seen. But the Japanese remained obdurate, and finally the Khan sent an ultimatum, to which Tokimune, the Hojo regent, replied by dismissing the envoys forthwith.

WITH the accession of the seventh Hojo regent, Sadatoki, the prosperous era of the Bakufu came to an end. Sadatoki himself seems to have been a man of much ability and fine impulses. He succeeded his father, Tokimune, at the age of fourteen, and during nine years he remained under the tutelage of the prime minister, Taira no Yoritsuna, thereafter taking the reins of government into his own hands.

Tokiyori, as already related, though he nominally resigned and entered religion in 1256, really held the reins of power until his death, in 1263. There were altogether nine of the Hojo regents, as shown below: Tokimasa 1203-1205 Yoshitoki 1205-1224 Yasutoki 1224-1242 Tsunetoki 1242-1246 Tokiyori 1246-1256 Retired in 1256, but ruled in camera till 1263 Tokimune 1256-1284

Already, in 1280, Tokimune had obtained from Buddhist sources information of the Mongol preparations preparations so extensive that the felling of timber to make ships inspired a Chinese poem in which the green hills were depicted as mourning for their trees and he would not have failed to garrison strongly a position so cardinal as the midchannel island of Tsushima. It was not reduced.

A zealous believer, from his youth upwards, in the doctrines of the Zen sect of Buddhism, he built a temple called Saimyo-ji among the hills of Kamakura, and retired thither to tend his health entrusting the office of shikken to a relative, Nagatoki, as his own son, Tokimune, was still of tender age but continuing himself to administer military and judicial affairs, especially when any criminal or civil case of a complicated or difficult nature occurred.

It has been suggested that Tokimune was not guided in this matter solely by religious instincts: he used the Zen-shu bonzes as a channel for obtaining information about China. Sogen himself, when officiating at the temple of Nengjen, in Wenchow, had barely escaped massacre at the hands of the Mongols, and he may not have been averse to acting as a medium of information between China and Kamakura.

Nichiren gained great credit for predicting, on the eve of the Mongol invasion, that a heavy calamity was about to fall upon the country, but owing to an accusation of political intrigues, he was first condemned to be beheaded, and then was banished to the island of Sado. His sentence was soon revoked, however, by the regent Tokimune, who granted him written permission to propagate his doctrines.

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.