The Kamakura house's own chronicle, in daily entries. For 1199 and 1200 it records the succession after Yoritomo's death on the thirteenth day of the first month of Kenkyu 10 (9 February 1199): Yoriie's assumption of the headship, the council of thirteen senior housemen set up in the fourth month of 1199 to hear suits in his place, the housemen's petition against Kajiwara Kagetoki in the tenth month of 1199, his expulsion from Kamakura in the twelfth month, his flight and death at Kiyomigaseki on the twentieth day of the first month of Shoji 2 (6 February 1200), the rise of Hojo Tokimasa, the deaths of Miura Yoshizumi and Adachi Morinaga, the shrines and Buddhist rites at Kamakura, and the shogunate's dealings with the court and the provincial land stewards. It is compiled and partisan for the Hojo, and the year 1199 is thin, but it is the base text for the east of Japan in 1200. The Ezo appear only in passing, in the record of the 1189 Oshu campaign.
About this source
- Title
- Azuma kagami (吾妻鏡)
- Author
- Anonymous; compiled by officials of the Kamakura shogunate
- Written
- compiled about 1300 from the shogunate's records, diaries and family documents
- Language
- Japanese in a Chinese-style written form (hentai kanbun)
- Covers
- 1180 to 1266, with gaps (the years 1196 to 1198 and some others are missing)
- Kind
- Chronicle
No English translation for 1199 and 1200; Shinoda stops in 1185 and is under copyright. The Shintei zoho Kokushi taikei edition (vols 32 and 33) is the text of record; the NDL scans linked are older editions. The 1199 entries are fragmentary and Yoritomo's last year (1198) is lost.
Where to read it
Editions
- Azuma kagami, vol. 1, Nihon koten zenshu edition (1926), at the NDL Digital Collections
- Azuma kagami, Kikkawa-bon, vol. 1 (Kokusho Kankokai), at the NDL Digital Collections
Translations
- M. Shinoda, The Founding of the Kamakura Shogunate 1180 to 1185, with Selected Translations from the Azuma Kagami (Columbia, 1960), English, covers 1180 to 1185 only (not freely online)