Kenmu Restoration
| Kenmu Restoration | ||||||||||||
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日本国 Nippon-koku |
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| Capital | Heian-kyō | |||||||||||
| Languages | Late Middle Japanese | |||||||||||
| Religion | Shinbutsu shūgō | |||||||||||
| Government | Absolute monarchy | |||||||||||
| Emperor | ||||||||||||
| • | 1318-1339 | Go-Daigo | ||||||||||
| Shogun | ||||||||||||
| • | 1333 | Moriyoshi | ||||||||||
| • | 1335-1336 | Narinaga | ||||||||||
| History | ||||||||||||
| • | Genkō War begins | 1333 | ||||||||||
| • | Siege of Kamakura | May 18, 1333 | ||||||||||
| • | Ashikaga Takauji captures Kyoto | February 23, 1336 | ||||||||||
| Currency | Ryō | |||||||||||
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The Kenmu (or Kemmu) Restoration (建武の新政 Kenmu no shinsei?) (1333–1336) is the name given to both the three-year period of Japanese history between the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period, and the political events that took place in it. The restoration was an effort made by Emperor Go-Daigo to bring the Imperial House back into power, thus restoring a civilian government after almost a century and a half of military rule. The attempted restoration ultimately failed and was replaced by the Ashikaga shogunate (1336–1575). This was to be the last time the Emperor had any power until the Meiji restoration of 1867. The many and serious political errors made by the Imperial House during this three-year period were to have important repercussions in the following decades and end with the rise to power of the Ashikaga dynasty.
The Emperor's role had been usurped by the Minamoto and Hōjō families ever since Minamoto no Yoritomo had obtained from the Emperor the title of Shogun in 1192, ruling thereafter from Kamakura. For various reasons, the Kamakura shogunate decided to allow two contending imperial lines — known as the Southern Court or junior line, and the Northern Court or senior line - to alternate on the throne. The method worked for several successions until a member of the Southern Court ascended to the throne as Emperor Go-Daigo. Go-Daigo wanted to overthrow the shogunate and openly defied Kamakura by naming his own son his heir. In 1331 the shogunate exiled Go-Daigo but loyalist forces, including Kusunoki Masashige, rebelled and came to his support. They were aided by, among others, future shogun Ashikaga Takauji, a samurai who had turned against Kamakura when dispatched to put down Go-Daigo's rebellion. At roughly the same time, Nitta Yoshisada, another eastern chieftain, attacked the shogunate's capital. The shogunate tried to resist his advance: Yoshisada and shogunate forces fought several times along the Kamakura Kaidō, for example at Kotesashigahara (小手差原?), Kumegawa (久米河?) (both near today's Tokorozawa, Saitama Prefecture), and Bubaigawara, in today's Fuchū, ever closer to Kamakura. The city was finally reached, besieged, and taken. Kamakura would remain for one century the political capital of the Kantō region, but its supremacy was over.
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