Southern and middle Mutsu runs from the Shirakawa and Nakoso gates through the Fukushima basin to the Sendai plain and up the Kitakami valley to Hiraizumi and Esashi.
Since the autumn of 1189 it has been Kamakura's by conquest. Yoritomo rewarded his lords with stewardships (the Date, the Kasai, the Yūki, the Sōma and Iwaki lines among them, mostly recalled) and put the Ōshū commissioner Kasai Kiyoshige over them, with the caretaker Isawa Iezumi at Taga; the court's governor of Mutsu remains on paper. Hiraizumi's temples survive in decline.
Who holds it
- Name
- Kasai Kiyoshige and Isawa Iezumi
- Title
- Ōshū commissioner and Mutsu caretaker
- Confidence
- low
The brief and recollection of Mass; no list of 1199 to 1200 holders was opened.
What it holds
- Taga castle (rusu-dokoro)
- Hiraizumi (town record)
- Shiogama shrine
- Date
- Kasai (Ōshū commissioner)
- Shirakawa and Nakoso barriers
How things stand that morning
What Kamakura names or controls: Firm in the south and the Sendai plain, thinner towards the Kitakami's upper reaches. What stops it: The old Fujiwara retainers' grudges; the stewards' quarrels; the distance.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Recollection, the brief and the campaign board; no list of governors or constables for 1200 was opened.
"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.
On the map: A rough outline from the modern prefecture; the old province's edges differ in places.
Primary sources for Kamakura regime
Chronicles, registers, sagas and inscriptions written in or near 1200 that cover this entry. Each has its own page with editions, translations and where to read it.
- Hundred Times Refined Extracts: court annals (late thirteenth century, from court diaries). Short dated annals of the imperial court excerpted from courtiers' diaries, among them the Gyokuyo and the Meigetsuki. Read online
- Mirror of the East, Anonymous; compiled by officials of the Kamakura shogunate (compiled about 1300 from the shogunate's records, diaries and family documents). The Kamakura house's own chronicle, in daily entries. Read online
- Jottings of a Fool: an interpretative history of Japan, Jien (慈円) (about 1219 to 1220, revised to about 1223). A history by Kujo Kanezane's brother, head of the Tendai school and the leading churchman of the court, written to explain the fall of the Kujo and the rise of the warriors as the working of principle (dori). Read online
- Diary of the Inokuma Regent: the diary of Konoe Iezane, Konoe Iezane (近衛家実) (1197 to 1218, as a daily diary). The diary of the regent's heir, aged twenty-one in 1200 and already a senior courtier under his father Konoe Motomichi, who was regent (sessho) for the child emperor Tsuchimikado. Read online
- Leaves of Jade: the diary of Kujo Kanezane, Kujo (Fujiwara) Kanezane (九條兼實) (1164 to 1200, as a daily diary). The diary of the former regent, Yoritomo's ally at court, who had been driven from power in the Kenkyu purge of 1196 and lived in retirement in 1200. Read online
- Record of the Bright Moon: the diary of Fujiwara no Teika, Fujiwara no Teika (藤原定家) (1180 to 1235, as a daily diary, with gaps). The diary of the poet and courtier, then thirty-eight and a middle-ranking official of the Kujo house. Read online
- Surviving Documents of the Kamakura Period, Various; collected by Takeuchi Rizo (竹内理三) (documents of 1185 to 1333, collected and printed 1971 to 1997). The collected charters, deeds, court orders, shogunal directives, temple records and land registers of the Kamakura age, printed in date order. Read online
- The Tale of the Heike, Anonymous; traditionally attributed to Shinano no Zenji Yukinaga, performed and reshaped by blind reciters (early thirteenth century in its first form; the standard Kakuichi text was fixed in 1371). The epic of the Genpei war, in the form the reciters gave it over the century after 1200. Read online
Sources and studies
- KJA_BRIEF.md and the OMNIA board for sheet kja (the lead's notes: [own] computation, [not yet checked against the source] recollection, [en] English Wikipedia)
- Azuma Kagami (the Kamakura chronicle), Kenkyu 10 to Shoji 2 entries, recalled and through the brief; ja.wikipedia and ja.wikisource were refused in this session, so no entry was re-read
- Jeffrey P. Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (1974), from memory; the archive.org full text could not be opened
- English Wikipedia: Northern Fujiwara (read this session; thin)
- English Wikipedia: Date clan (read this session; thin)
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.