themselves of their robes of costly brocade and hurling them at their favorites! Naturally, this state of things could not last. A Japanese historian describes the Kamakura of those decadent days as a tree still green and beautiful to the eye, but crumbling and rotten at the core: the days of the Hojo dynasty were numbered.
At the command of the emperor Go-Daigo loyalist troops were raised to attack the rebels—as the military government was described: two of the leading spirits of this movement being the famous Kusunoki Masashige and Nitta Yoshisada. The campaign was waged with varying success until the fall and destruction of Kamakura was accomplished by Nitta Yoshisada. This great general hurled his troops upon the city in three divisions—the army commanded by himself advancing across the sands from Inamuragasaki; the death-knell of the military capital was sounded on July 5, 1333—a day traced in blood and ashes upon the pages of Kamakura's past.
Takatoki, although so wanting and worthless as a ruler, gave ample proof at the time of this catastrophe that the warrior spirit of his race was still alive. Together with almost a thousand of his officers and adherents he died the hero's death upon his sword that was the inevitable sequel of a ruined cause from the viewpoint of medieval chivalry: all perished in a scene of dauntless valor that stands out in high relief from the pages of history, even in those heroic days. When the people of Kamakura became aware of this tragedy that marked the overthrow of the Hojo line, so strong and unwavering was their fidelity to their fallen ruler that large numbers of them resolved to accompany the spirit of their lord in his journey to the land of shades. Over six thousand of them thus died the death of loyalty upon this dreadful day, whole families destroying themselves, and numerous priests participating in the general orgy of slaughter and extinction.
These events resulted in the emperor's restoration to power for a short time, but the military regime was not destined to suffer a long eclipse. Another of his generals—one who had been effective in fighting for the imperial cause, and who enjoyed the emperor's confidence in a marked degree—turned traitor, and determined to succeed the Hojo as head of the military rule at Kamakura: this was Ashikaga Takauji. His demands being naturally reputhated at Kyoto, this bold and treacherous usurper determined to assert his claim to the shogunate by force, and at the head of a vast army attacked the western capital. This campaign resulted in the flight of the emperor Go-Daigo, (who afterward died in exile), and the establishment of Takauji as shogun and founder of the Ashikaga dynasty, which lasted for fourteen generations, extending over a period of almost 240 years (1335-1573).
When Takauji proclaimed himself shogun he installed his residence upon the same site that had formerly been occupied by Yoritomo's mansion; but during the next year (1336), the new bakufu ruler left Kamakura in charge of a kanryo, or governor-general, and set up his own headquarters in Kyoto, where he established himself on a scale of great luxury and magnificence, in marked contrast to the austere simplicity and economy that had been the leading motives of the Hojo.
By this time Kamakura was beginning to rise from the holocaust of Nitta Yoshisada's invasion, and became a sort of secondary base where the laws and regulations were drawn up, and the administrative code was dispensed along the lines of Takauji's predecessors. But the Kamakura period was at an end. The erstwhile brilliant capital never really recovered from the chaos of Nitta's attack, and the conflagration started upon that day proved the funeral pyre of Kamakura's greatness, the renaissance under the Ashikaga regime being but a pale reflection of its departed glories, and barely exceeding the duration of a century.
During that period, a condition of great and increasing strife existed between the governors of Kamakura (kanryo) and their representatives (shitsuji): members of great Uesugi family holding the latter office, which became so powerful that it would be difficult to decide which wielded the greater authority, kanryo or shitsuji. This truculent state of affairs culminated in 1445, when the representative openly attacked the governor Nariuji. The latter fled to Koga in Shimousa (now Chiba-Ibaraki prefectures), Kamakura losing much prestige by this undignified condition of internal discord. The populace, hoping that the fugitive governor would return and be reinstated in office, preserved his estates in readiness and kept the land cultivated; but the departed kanryo died in exile, this fact constituting a potent factor in the final decline of Kamakura.
The city suffered extensive damage in the siege of 1454, and later on was again almost reduced to ashes by the great fire of 1526. Large numbers of its inhabitants transferred their residence to Odawara when the latter town rose into prominence as the seat of the powerful Hojo family, Kamakura receiving its final coup de grace in the year 1603, when Edo was founded as the capital of the Tokugawa shogun.
The former brilliant city gradually declined into the little fishing village of the pre-Yoritomo period. However, the fortunes of this historic spot were not doomed to retrograde into permanent obscurity, and later on another renaissance was to develop, although based upon more prosaic lines.
The Restoration of 1868, with Tokyo established as the imperial capital; the rapid expansion of other adjacent towns into large and flourishing cities; increased facilities of communication; and various other reasons, all conduced to call attention to Kamakura's obvious and indestructible assets—its charming and picturesque scenery; the glorious sweep of blue ocean fringed by its crescent of sandy beach; its easiness of access; its teeming associations with ancient history—of which, like Rome, it has been said that "legends and romances cluster around every stone, and every cave is heavy with the bones of dead heroes"; its innumerable walks and excursions in every direction; and finally its pure bracing air and exceptionally fine climate.
However, the Restoration was not an unmixed blessing, for at that time the temples were dispossessed of their lands, and consequently fell upon very hard times; the high-water mark of their distress being reached about the year 1886 or 1887, when it is even said that some of the great structures were demolished and the timbers sold for firewood.
In 1890 the railroad, which before then had not come nearer than Ofuna—the junction upon the main line four miles distant—directly linked Kamakura with the capital, this fact being naturally conducive to a new era of prosperity. Since that time the besso (seaside villas) of residents of Tokyo and Yokohama have increased and multiplied apace—Yuigahama gaining wide celebrity as a bathing resort and acquiring a high degree of popularity with the swarms of summer visitors, who transform the beach into a scene of liveliest animation. Three years after the advent of the railway the shihan gakko (school for the training of primary school teachers) was removed from Yokohama to its present quarters at Kamakura on the eastern side of Hachiman. According to tradition the spacious playground of this academy is said to be the identical site of Takatoki's dogfights. Other scholastic institutions are the girls' school in the main avenue, with some 150 pupils; the large primary school almost opposite, two kindergartens, an orphanage for poor children, etc.
Although so many temples and shrines have been overtaken by various calamities and have disappeared since Kamakura's palmy days, yet there still remain the considerable number of forty Buddhist, and nineteen Shinto temples: eighteen of the former being associated with the Nichiren doctrines, and from their intimate connection with the life and teachings of the saint attract large numbers of the devotees of this most popular sect.
Two versions are extant regarding to origin of the name Kamakura. According to one theory the first emperor, Jinmu, visited this district during the course of his punitive expeditions in the eastern part of Japan. The enemy to the number of some thousands were slain by the imperial warriors—the corpses being piled up like mountains: hence this district acquired the name of kabanekura, or repository for dead bodies, which later became Kamakura. But a less sanguinary derivation, and the one that is generally accepted is the following. Fujiwara no Kamatari, the celebrated soldier and statesman of the seventh century, while on a pilgrimage to a distant shrine, passed one night at the little hamlet of Yui. Here he dreamed a sacred dream in which he was instructed by the powers above to bury his emblem, the kama, or large sickle that he carried, upon a hill in the district. This height is said to be the eminence behind Hachiman and which to the present day bears the name
