ABSTRACT

From the standpoint of government structures and political power, the imperial court of medieval Japan is a historiographic dead end. During the Kamakura era (1185–1334)—the first century and a half of the period traditionally defined as medieval—there was still political life in the court, but power was shared with the rising warriors, whose eventual eclipse of the old aristocracy was inevitable, at least as commonly interpreted by historians. Little wonder that the period is known by the name of the seat of warrior government, Kamakura, not by a title or term that describes the way the land was actually governed. With the rise of the Ashikaga family, which established the second warrior government or Muromachi shogunate (1336–1573), all vestiges of the imperial court’s governing institutions were done away with. The court was finished.