Hōjō Sanetoki was a military leader of the middle Kamakura period.
Background
Hōjō Sanetoki was born in 1224. He was a son of Hôjô Saneyasu and grandson of Yoshitoki, he held a number of important positions in the Kamakura shogunatc. Because he had a country estate at Kanazawa in the province of Musashi, he was also called Kanazawa-shi.
Personality
Sanetoki was very fond of learning and built up a large collection of books gathered from all over Japan or imported from China and had copies made of the rarer items. He moved the entire collection to a temple called Shômyô- ji in Kanazawa, where the books were maintained and arrangements were made whereby interested persons could consult or borrow them. Known as the Kanazawa bunko, it was the only library facility in existence in the Kamakura period.
At present in the Kanazawa Ward of the city of Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture, the site of the Kanazawa bunko, there is a prefectural library that houses some twenty thousand rare books originally in Sanetoki’s collection.