Kujō Yoritsune

Kujō Yoritsune (1218–1256), also called Fujiwara no Yoritsune, became Kamakura’s fourth shogun. He was a son of the Kyoto aristocrat Kujō Michie and a distant relative of Yoritomo. After Sanetomo’s assassination in 1219, he was brought east as the infant Mitora. His formal appointment as shogun came in 1226. Kamakura had secured a new household around which loyalty could gather while the Hōjō regents continued to conduct government. [S01, S02]

In 1230 he married Take no Gosho, a daughter of the former shogun Yoriie. Court descent and marriage thus connected the new ruler to the displaced Minamoto household. His office also had practical weight: a surviving charter bearing his authorization recognized the Irobe family’s control of the Koizumi estate. Such authorization gave a regional household official recognition of its control, even while the regents conducted government. [S01, S03]

In 1244 the shogunal position passed to his son Yoritsugu under Hōjō Tsunetoki. Yoritsune remained in Kamakura as a retired lord whose ties to followers still mattered. Two years later, Hōjō Tokiyori sent him back to Kyoto amid suspicion of opposition to Hōjō rule. He died there in 1256. Removal from office had not immediately dissolved his political connections; those connections helped make his continued presence difficult for the men who controlled the government. [S01, S02]