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

Kamakura's constables, west

Kamakura's rights in the west are a patchwork, not provinces.

The grant of 1185 gave Yoritomo's men stewardships over Taira and rebel lands and constable's duties; by 1186 it was narrowed to the constable's duties and capital guard. So in 1200 there are provinces with a constable and others with none, and the constable's reach is the peace and the call of housemen, not the revenue. In Yamato Kōfukuji stands in the constable's place and Kamakura has appointed none [not yet checked against the source].

In the Kinai the housemen of the capital guard take turns. Known constables: the Sasaki (Ōmi, and Awa and Awaji for Tsunetaka [not yet checked against the source]); the Ōtomo and Shimazu in Kyūshū. For the San'yō and the rest of Shikoku I could not confirm a name for 1 January 1200. Kajiwara Kagetoki, who is out of favour on 1 January 1200 and falls from power within weeks (the likely course), is recalled as constable of Harima in the 1180s; whether he held it on 1 January is not pinned.

Who he is

Name
Named where known: Sasaki Sadatsuna (Ōmi); Ōtomo Yoshinao (Bungo, Buzen); Shimazu Tadahisa (Satsuma, Ōsumi, Hyūga); Sasaki Tsunetaka (Awa and Awaji [not yet checked against the source]); the rest not known
Title
Constables (shugo) and stewards (jitō) of Kamakura
Since
1185 (grant), narrowed in 1186
Confidence
low

The brief; English Wikipedia (Shugo) says only that shugo were created in 1185; the names for Shikoku and the San'yō are recollection and are not pinned.

Overlord

Kamakura

What it holds

  • The constable's duties and the call on the housemen in the provinces where constables were placed
  • Stewardships (jitō) over former Taira and rebel estates scattered through the west (the 'Kantō-held' Heike estates)

How things stand that morning

Kamakura's western reach is thin and its own quarrels will thin it further in 1200. Do not draw uniform Kamakura provinces.

Where the sources disagree

Evidence: Structure from the standard studies and the brief; named holders marked.

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. OMNIA kja regional brief (KJA_BRIEF.md), the campaign's dated traps and realm table
  2. Shugo, English Wikipedia
  3. Jeffrey Mass, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (background reading, not re-read in this session)

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