Hōjō Tokimune

Hōjō Tokimune (1251–1284), eighth shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, held Japan against Kublai Khan's invasions. Second son of the shikken Hōjō Tokiyori, he was made heir ahead of an elder concubine-born half-brother. He became family head in 1263 and shikken in 1268, when a Korean envoy brought Kublai's demand for submission.

Tokimune never answered the Mongol letters, ordered western Japan's vassals to arm, and had Kublai's envoys executed in 1275 and 1279. At home he banished the monk Nichiren in 1271 and crushed the February Disturbance of 1272, in which his half-brother Tokisuke died. After the 1274 landing he walled Hakata Bay; the invasion of 1281 was wrecked by a typhoon and a Japanese assault.

A Zen patron, he founded Engaku-ji in 1282 for the Mongol war dead. He took the tonsure on 4 April 1284 and died the same day, aged thirty-two, leaving the war's veterans unrewarded.