Officers: prévôtés, bailiwicks, seneschals · The Kamakura house and its housemen · as at first light, 1 January 1200

Council of Thirteen

After Yoritomo's death the housemen did not want his teenage son to judge their land suits alone.

On 8 May 1199 (Kenkyū 10/4/12) it was ordered that Yoriie should no longer decide suits himself: thirteen men, four with the pen and nine with the bow, would hear and decide them together, and no one was to carry a suit to him except through them. It is not a regency (there is no regent) and not a government that rules the provinces: it is a bench of judges and counsellors of the Mandokoro and Monchūjo, in which the families who made Yoritomo's rule protect their own holdings. How far it truly bound Yoriie is argued: the Azuma Kagami, a Hōjō text, presents it as a check on a headstrong boy; other readers see an arrangement the old guard welcomed because it kept the favourites away.

On 1 January 1200 all thirteen are alive and on the list, though Kajiwara is out of favour. On the likely course (below), by the end of the first week of February Kajiwara is dead, Miura Yoshizumi follows on 9 February and Adachi Morinaga on about 10 May, and the Thirteen are ten; none of that has happened on 1 January.

Who he is

Name
the thirteen named below
Title
Collective: four court-trained officials and nine warrior chiefs
Since
Ordered Kenkyū 10/4/12, about 8 May 1199 (the Azuma Kagami's entry; the brief)
Family
Civil: Ōe no Hiromoto, Miyoshi Yasunobu, Nakahara Chikayoshi, Nikaidō Yukimasa. Warrior: Hōjō Tokimasa, Hōjō Yoshitoki, Miura Yoshizumi, Wada Yoshimori, Hiki Yoshikazu, Adachi Morinaga, Adachi Tōmoto, Hatta Tomoie, Kajiwara Kagetoki.
Confidence
medium

The brief (nine warriors and four civil officials) and the zh.wikipedia page on Yoriie, which dates the order to Kenkyū 10/4/12 and says Yoriie stopped deciding suits himself; the ja.wikipedia page on the council was refused.

Overlord

Yoriie, who still confirms what they decide

What it holds

  • The hearing of lawsuits between housemen
  • Advice to Yoriie on grants and punishments

How it was acquired

By the order of 8 May 1199.

Allies and rivals

Three groups sit in it: the Hōjō (Tokimasa, Yoshitoki), the Hiki (Yoshikazu) and the old guard (Miura, Wada, Hatta, Adachi, Kajiwara); the four officials are the secretariat.

How things stand that morning

Sitting. The housemen's petition against Kajiwara bypasses it, which shows that the real power lies with the great houses acting together.

Wealth

None of its own.

Military

None: each member has his own household.

Threats

  • A quarrel within it between Hōjō and Hiki
  • Deaths, on the likely course: three of the thirteen die within the first four months of 1200 (Kajiwara, Miura Yoshizumi, Adachi Morinaga)

What the year holds

What happened next, if nothing in play changes it. Each event carries what it depends on and what would stop it.

In 1200

  1. Shōji 2/1/20, 1/23 and 4/26 (about 6 February, 9 February and 10 May 1200)Kajiwara, Yoshizumi and Morinaga leave the Thirteen by death.Depends on: Kajiwara's fall; natural deaths Stopped by: Nothing in play stops a natural death; only a change in the person's circumstances (illness cured, flight, removal) alters the date, and the campaign rules on that.

Later, on the likely course

  1. Kennin 3/9/2 (8 October 1203)Hiki Yoshikazu is killed; the council ceases to matter once Tokimasa becomes shikken in 1203.Depends on: Hōjō supremacy Stopped by: A Hiki victory

Places of note

  • Ōkura mansion: Where the council sits (site approximate)

Where the sources disagree

  • The campaign board does not mention the Thirteen as such. The ja.wikipedia page on the council and the English page on it were not available to me, so every date is the brief's or the zh page's.

Evidence: One chronicle entry through secondary pages; the historiography was not read.

"The campaign board" is OMNIA's working map. These notes record where its earlier claims were checked against the sources.

On the map: Not drawn.

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

  1. 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)
  2. 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
  3. Jeffrey P. Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (1974), from memory; the archive.org full text could not be opened
  4. zh.wikipedia: Minamoto no Yoriie (read this session; thin)

Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.