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Rh retained the Mikado as theoretical head of the state, descendant of the Sun-Goddess, fountain of all honour. There never were two emperors, acknowledged as such, one spiritual and one secular, as has been so often asserted by European writers. There never was but one emperor,—an emperor powerless, it is true, seen only by the women who attended him, often a mere infant in arms, who was discarded on reaching adolescence for another infant in arms. Still, he was the theoretical head of the state, whose authority was only delegated to the Shōgun as, so to say, Mayor of the Palace.

By a curious parallelism of destiny, the Shōgunate itself more than once showed signs of fading away from substance into shadow. Yoritomo's descendants did not prove worthy of him, and for more than a century (A.D. 1205—1333) the real authority was wielded by the so-called "Regents" of the Hōjō family, while their liege lords, the Shōguns, though holding a nominal court at Kamakura, were for all that period little better than empty names. So completely were the Hōjōs masters of the whole country that they actually had their deputy governors at Kyōto and in Kyūshū in the south-west, and thought nothing, of banishing Mikados to distant islands. Their rule was made memorable by the repulse of the Mongol fleet sent by Kublai Khan with the purpose of adding Japan to his gigantic dominions. This was at the end of the thirteenth century, since which time Japan has never been attacked from without.

During the fourteenth century, even the dowager-like calm of the Court of Kyōto was broken by internecine strife. Two branches of the Imperial house, supported each by different feudal chiefs, disputed the crown. One was called the Hokuchō, or "Northern Court," the other the Nanchō, or "Southern Court." After lasting some sixty years, this contest terminated in A.D. 1392 by the triumph of the Northern dynasty, whose cause the powerful Ashikaga family had espoused. From 1338 down to the close of the sixteenth century, the Ashikagas ruled Japan as Shōguns. Their Court was a centre of elegance, at which painting flourished, and the lyric drama, and the tea ceremonies, and the highly