The Mongol Invasions, the Fall of Kamakura, and the Age of Sengoku

After Yoritomo's death, his widow's family, the Hojo, rose to dominance: Hojo Tokimasa became the first shikken, or regent to the shogun, in 1203, and after the Hojo defeated the imperial court in the Jokyu War of 1221, they governed Japan through a succession of largely powerless "puppet shoguns" for more than a century. Regent Hojo Yasutoki promulgated the Goseibai Shikimoku in 1232, the first properly samurai legal code, regulating inheritance, land disputes among gokenin, and the duties of shugo and jito. Having subjugated Korea as a vassal state, Kublai Khan sent repeated embassies demanding Japan's submission, which Regent Hojo Tokimune systematically rejected; a first invasion fleet landed at Hakata Bay in 1274 but was forced to retreat by a storm, and a second, much larger invasion in the summer of 1281 was devastated by a powerful typhoon remembered as the "kamikaze," or divine wind. Because there was no enemy territory to distribute as reward, the bakufu could not adequately compensate the thousands of gokenin it had mobilized, and the resulting debt and discontent, only partly eased by a 1297 decree canceling warrior debts, left the regime's social base deeply weakened.