Background
Yoshitoki Hōjō was born in 1163. He was the eldest son of Hojo Tokimasa.
北条 義時
Yoshitoki Hōjō was born in 1163. He was the eldest son of Hojo Tokimasa.
He joined the forces of Minamoto no Yoritomo in the struggle to overthrow the Taira family and establish the Kamakura shogunate. His father aspired to depose the third shogun, Minamoto no Sanetomo, and make himself the head of the military government, but Yoshitoki joined with his elder sister Masako in thwarting his father’s plans, principally because he feared that his father’s insatiable thirst for political power was arousing antagonism among the other warrior groups in the government.
In 1205 he succeeded his father to become the second shikken, or regent, nominally acting as assistant to the shogun but in practice wielding the actual power of government.
In 1213 he engaged in a struggle with his most potent rival among the military leaders, Wada Yoshimori, and succeeded in wiping out him and his family, thus making the Hojo virtual dictators of the shogunate. In 1221, when the forces centering around the imperial court attempted to overthrow him in a move known as the Jokyu disturbance, he quickly restored order, crushing the power of the court nobility, which until this time had constituted an independent political body controlling the western part of Japan. This completed the process by which the shogunate extended its rule over the entire country.
