Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/31

 his sway, and he thus left the clan fatally weakened at the time of his death. Kamakura was then divided between two parties, the literary and the military. With the former were associated Masa, Yoritomo's widow, and her family, the Hōjō. A struggle ensued. Masa intrigued to preserve the succession for her own son in preference to her step-son, who had the right of primogeniture. Both of the aspirants were ultimately done to death, and the final result was that a baby nephew of Yoritomo was brought from Kyōtō to fill the office of Shogun, the head of the Hōjō family becoming Vicegerent (Shikken).

Thus, within a few years after Yoritomo's death, there was instituted at Kamakura a system of government precisely analogous to that which had existed for centuries under the Fujiwara in Kyōtō. A child, who on State occasions was carried to the council chamber in the lady Masa's arms, served as the nominal repository of supreme power, the functions of administration being really performed by the representatives of a paramount family.

These were a great pair, the lady Masa and her brother, Hōjō Yoshitoki, the Vicegerent. By inflexibly just judgments, by a policy of uniform impartiality, by frugal lives, by a wise system of taxes imposed chiefly on luxuries, and by the stern repression of bribery, they won a high place in the esteem and love of the people. There is nothing to suggest that they would have