Masako Hōjō was the first shogun, or military dictator, of Japan. She is said to have been largely responsible for Yoritomo’s success, and after her husband's death, she assumed great power.
Background
Masako Hōjō was born in 1157. She was the eldest daughter of Hojo Tokimasa and his wife, Hōjō no Maki. Masako's parents were still in their teens, and she was raised by many nursemaids and ladies-in-waiting. Masako was born into a world of war and strife. In Kyoto, the capital of Japan, where Cloistered Emperor Toba and Emperor Sutoku were warring over succession to the throne, the Hōgen Rebellion had broken out. The Hōjō family wisely chose to stay out of the rebellion, even though Masako's lineage was descended from the Taira clan and was therefore related to the imperial family.
During the Heiji Rebellion, in 1159, the Taira clan, under Taira no Kiyomori, with the support of Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa defeated the Minamoto clan, under the leadership of Minamoto no Yoshitomo. Yoshitomo was executed, and his sons and daughters were either executed or sent to nunneries. Only three of his sons survived. Minamoto no Yoshitsune and Minamoto no Noriyori were forced into the priesthood, while Minamoto no Yoritomo, only thirteen, was spared and sent to exile in Izu, the domain of Hōjō Tokimasa. Masako was barely an infant while all this was taking place. The Taira clan, under Kiyomori, had successfully taken control of Japan.
Masako had an elder brother, Hōjō Munetoki, and in 1163 a younger brother, Yoshitoki, was born. Later another brother, Hōjō Tokifusa would be born, and another sister, whose name is lost to history. Until her marriage in 1179, Masako lived the life of a tomboy, horseback riding, hunting, and fishing, and eating with the men rather than with her mother, sister, and the other women of the household.
Career
In the event, Tokimasa could scarcely have chosen a better son-in-law, for two decades after his exile Yoritomo adeptly parleyed his pedigree, the localized ambitions of provincial warriors, and a series of upheavals within the imperial court into a new-fledged form of nationwide power and authority. He established a new institution, a sort of government within the imperial government, headquartered in Kamakura (southwest of present-day Tokyo) and charged with overseeing eastern Japan and the warrior class.
When Yoritomo died in 1199 and was succeeded by his son Yoriie, a power struggle developed rapidly between Yoriie's father-in-law, Hiki Yoshikazu, and his maternal relatives, led by his mother Masako and his grandfather Tokimasa. In 1203 the Hojo attacked and eliminated the Hiki and then deposed Yoriie, replacing him with his younger brother, Sanetomo. Because Sanetomo was only eleven years old at the time, Tokimasa assumed real control of the Kamakura regime. A scant two years later Masako and her brother Yoshitoki deposed their father and then set about reorganizing the Kamakura power structure, redefining both the regime's role in national governance and
their own place within it.
Masako, who had taken the tonsure shortly after the death of her husband, rapidly came to be known as "the nun-shogun"; Yoshitoki assumed the position of regent (shikken) over the still-adolescent Sanetomo. Over the next decade and a half, the pair targeted and destroyed, one by one, every warrior house in Japan that appeared to be a serious competitor for control of the shogunate, often by cleverly inciting potential rivals into rebellion.
The assassination of Sanetomo in 1219 gave Masako and Yoshitoki the excuse to first declare martial law and seize dictatorial powers over the shogunate and then to arrange for the first of a six-generation series of infant court nobles and imperial princes serving as figurehead shoguns. Their most noteworthy achievement during this period was their victory in 1221 over an army raised by the former emperor, Go-Toba, and sent out to destroy the Kamakura regime. The shogunate's triumph in this conflict resulted in an expansion of its vassal network in western Japan and the appointment of shogunal deputies to govern the imperial capital city of Kyoto.
When Yoshitoki died in 1224 - some say that he was poisoned by his wife, who hoped to shift control of the shogunate to her own family - it was the sixty-seven-year-old Masako who foiled the plot and ensured the succession of Yoshitoki's son Yasutoki as regent. Thus this remarkable woman remained a political player to be reckoned with almost to the moment of her death a year later.
Achievements
Although Masako never saw a battlefield, she was perhaps the most important woman in Japanese military history. She built her fame not as a warrior, but as a governor of warriors. For this wife of Japan's first national warrior chieftain and mother of two others was one of the principal architects of the Kamakura shogunate, a regime that dominated her country's military men and military affairs for more than a century and a half.
Because of the key role that Masako played in the wielding and consolidation of power, she came to be referred to as Ama Shogun, the Nun Shogun.
Religion
Immediately after Yoritomo’s untimely demise, Masako became a Buddhist nun.
Politics
After the death of Masako's husband, she kept getting pulled back into politics. Her son Yoriie assumed power and started killing people he didn’t like, seizing property. When he made plans to murder a governor named Morinaga, Masako left her temple, stood in front of Morinaga’s house, and said, "if you’re gonna kill him, you gotta go through me first."
She took control of the shogunate, obliterated the assailants, and made her son give up the claim to the throne. From there on, she ruled pretty much directly - despite the fact that she was, on paper, just a common nun.
Personality
Masako openly defied her husband. When Yoritomo impregnated another lover, Masako ordered the woman dismissed and then run out of town. Later, Yoritomo started crushing on a court dancer named Shizuka Gozen, who didn’t want anything to do with him - and let it be known by publicly insulting him in poem form. This delighted Masako, and she took Shizuka under her wing, even trying to help her get out of town.
Connections
Around 1177 Masako met the young exile Yoritomo, and the two fell in love. Her father found out about their relationship and, concerned because he feared it would arouse the wrath of the Taira clan, tried to arrange a marriage for her with Yamaki Karnataka, a member of the Taira clan and a guard over Minamoto no Yoritomo. Masako ran away with Yoritomo and they took refuge in the mountains of Izu, where the soldier monks were so powerful that even Yamaki Kanetaka could not pursue them there. Masako and Yoritomo were married, and in 1180, they had their first daughter, Ō-Hime. In 1182, Masako and Yoritomo had their first son, Minamoto no Yoriie, who would be the heir.
In 1192, Yoritomo was named shōgun by Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa, who died later that year. He was now the most powerful man in Japan and gave that power over to Masako as well. The Hōjō clan shared in that power. That same year, Masako and Yoritomo had another son, Minamoto no Sanetomo.
