Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/231

 choosing a Prince whose father had stood aloof from all intrigues against Kamakura. When the delegate to whom Yasutoki entrusted the commission of enthroning the new sovereign, asked what he should do if, on reaching Kyōtō, he found that the succession had already become an accomplished fact, Yasutoki replied briefly: "Never mind. Only take care that my nominee ascends the Throne." If one of the Imperial Princes despatched from Kyōtō to fill the office of Shōgun in Kamakura, was found an undesirable personage, the Hōjō sent him back, and the samurai spoke of him as having been "exiled" to Kyōtō. It was also by a Hōjō Vicegerent that the Imperial line was divided into two branches privileged to occupy the Throne alternately for ten years. The limit of the time was arithmetically fair, for the reigns of the fifteen sovereigns, from the eightieth to the ninety-fourth, immediately preceding this new regime, had averaged only nine years. But the people could not fail to see that the sacred right of succession and the whole theory of the Emperor's relations to his people were violated by an arrangement which made two Imperial families competitors for a decennial tenure of the Crown, and substituted the fiat of a subject for the divine title of the sovereign. The last of the Hōjō Vicegerents, Takatoki, did no violence to the customs of his time when he sent a force of soldiers to Kyōtō to dethrone the Emperor, and