The great statesmen, legislators, and judges who contributed so much to the creation of the Bakufu did not long survive the Shokyu struggle. Miyoshi Yasunobu, who presided over the Department of Justice (Monju-dokoro) from the time of its establishment, had been attacked by mortal sickness before the Imperial army commenced its march eastward. His last advice was given to the lady Masa when he counselled an immediate advance against Kyoto. Soon afterwards he died at the age of eighty-two. The great Oye no Hiromoto, who contributed more than any other man to the conception and organization of the Kamakura system, and of whom history says that without him the Minamoto had never risen to fame, survived his colleague by only four years, dying, in 1225, at the age of seventy-eight. The lady Masa, one of the world's heroines, expired in the same year, and 1224 had seen the sudden demise of the regent, Hojo Yoshitoki. Fortunately for the Bakufu, the regent's son, Yasutoki, proved himself a ruler of the highest ability, and his immediate successors were not less worthy of the exalted office they filled.
ENGRAVING: SILK TASSEL
ENGRAVING: ITSUKUSHIMA JINJA (SHRINE), AT MIYAJIMA
CHAPTER XXVII
THE HOJO
THE HOJO IN KYOTO
THERE was nothing perfunctory in the administration of the "Two Rokuhara" (Ryo-Rokuhara) in Kyoto. The northern and the southern offices were presided over by the most prominent members of the Hojo family, men destined to fill the post of regent (shikkeri) subsequently in Kamakura. Thus, when Hojo Yoshitoki died suddenly, in 1224, his son, Yasutoki, returned at once to Kamakura to succeed to the regency, transferring to his son, Tokiuji, the charge of northern Rokuhara, and a short time afterwards the control of southern Rokuhara was similarly transferred from Yoshitoki is brother, Tokifusa, to the latter's son, Tokimori. Nominally, the jurisdiction of the two Rokuhara was confined to military affairs, but in reality their influence extended to every sphere within Kyoto and to the Kinai and the Saikai-do without.
THE HYOJOSHU
So long as the lady Masa lived, the administrative machinery at Kamakura suggested no sense of deficiency. That great woman accepted all the responsibility herself. But in the year (1225) of her death, Yasutoki, who had just succeeded to the regency, made an important reform. He organized within the Man-dokoro a council of fifteen or sixteen members, which was called the Hyojo-shu, and which virtually constituted the Bakufu cabinet. The Samurai-dokoro and the Monju-dokoro remained unchanged, but the political administration passed from the Monju-dokoro to the Hyojoshu, and the betto of the former became in effect the finance minister of the shogun.