Hōjō

The Hojo were the de facto rulers of Japan from 1203 to 1333 as hereditary regents, or shikken, of the Kamakura shogunate. Said to descend from a Taira branch in Izu, the family rose through Tokimasa, whose daughter Masako married Minamoto no Yoritomo; after Yoritomo's death he became regent to child shoguns, leaving shogun and court as figureheads.

The second regent Yoshitoki crushed Emperor Go-Toba's Jokyu War rising in 1221; Yasutoki created a council of state in 1225 and issued the first samurai code, the Goseibai Shikimoku, in 1232. The regency weathered the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281, broken by kamikaze typhoons, but the unrewarded defense costs alienated its vassals.

Go-Daigo's revolts of 1324 and 1331 opened its collapse: in 1333 Ashikaga Takauji defected and Nitta Yoshisada stormed Kamakura, where some 870 Hojo under the last regent Takatoki killed themselves at Tosho-ji. His son Tokiyuki briefly retook Kamakura in the 1335 Nakasendai rising and served the Southern Court until beheaded in 1353; the Later Hojo of Odawara were unrelated.