Yamato

The Yamato is Japan's imperial house, said by tradition to descend from the sun goddess Amaterasu through the legendary first emperor Jimmu in 660 BC; its earliest broadly historical sovereigns date to the early 500s, around Emperor Keitai and Emperor Kinmei, who took the throne in 539. In the Heian period the emperors reigned under Fujiwara regents and then cloistered retired emperors, while power passed to the Taira, the Minamoto and the Kamakura Hojo regents.

In 1272 Emperor Go-Saga's alternating-succession plan split the family into the rival Daikakuji and Jimyoin lines. Go-Daigo of the Daikakuji overthrew Kamakura in 1333 and briefly ruled directly in the Kenmu Restoration, but Ashikaga Takauji seized Kyoto in 1336 and enthroned a Jimyoin claimant as the Northern Court, while Go-Daigo's Southern Court held out at Yoshino until it submitted in 1392; the present line descends from the Northern emperors.

In the Sengoku wars the court sank into poverty; after 1603 the Tokugawa held it ceremonially subject under the 1615 court laws, its role confined to ritual, genealogy and scholarship.