Person1147 – 1199

Minamoto no Yoritomo

Warrior who founded the Kamakura shogunate, destroyed the Taira in the Genpei War and became seii taishōgun (shogun) in 1192

Son of Minamoto no Yoshitomo, he was exiled to Izu after his father’s defeat by Taira no Kiyomori in the Heiji Rebellion of 1159. There he married Masako, daughter of Hōjō Tokimasa. Rising in 1180, he was beaten at Ishibashiyama but rallied the warriors of the Kantō and made Kamakura his base, while his brother Yoshitsune destroyed the Taira at Dan-no-ura in 1185. He then turned on Yoshitsune, wiping out the Ōshū Fujiwara who had sheltered him in 1189. He became shogun in 1192, and after his death in 1199 real power passed to his wife’s family, the Hōjō.

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1 related event

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1185 – 1333Establishment of the Kamakura Shogunateleader
Minamoto no Yoritomo destroyed the Taira in the Genpei War, won the right to appoint shugo and jitō in 1185 and became seii taishōgun in 1192. It was the start of warrior government (the bakufu), bound by land and loyalty between shogun and vassals, that would rule Japan for nearly 700 years.

Themes this person appears in

Song, Ming and Samurai JapanAD 960 – 1500
The age when the civil-minded Song bought peace from Liao, Western Xia and Jin while the lower Yangtze boomed and Neo-Confucianism took shape, and the Ming, having driven out the Yuan, rebuilt the East Asian order through imperial autocracy, the sea ban and tribute — as Japan passed through the Kamakura and Muromachi warrior governments into the Warring States era, and Korea from Goryeo to Joseon