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, officially Kamakura-shi, is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the total area of . Kamakura was designated as a city on 3 November 1939.
Kamakura was Japan's de facto capital when it was the seat of the Kamakura shogunate from 1185 to 1333, established by Minamoto no Yoritomo. It was the first military government in Japan's history. After the downfall of the shogunate, Kamakura saw a temporary decline. However, during the Edo period, it regained popularity as a tourist destination among the townspeople of Edo. Despite suffering significant losses of historical and cultural assets due to the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923, Kamakura continues to be one of the major tourist attractions in the Kanto region, known for its historical landmarks such as Tsurugaoka Hachimangū and the Great Buddha of Kamakura.
There are various hypotheses about the origin of the name. According to the most likely theory, Kamakura, surrounded as it is on three sides by mountains, was likened both to a kamado, kama and to a kura, because both only have one side open.
Another and more picturesque explanation is a legend, relating how Fujiwara no Kamatari stopped at Yuigahama on his way to today's Ibaraki Prefecture, where he wanted to pray at the Kashima Shrine for the fall of Soga no Iruka. He dreamed of an old man who promised his support, and upon waking, he found next to his bed a type of spear called a . Kamatari enshrined it in a place called Ōkura. Kamayari plus Ōkura then turned into the name Kamakura. However, this and similar legends appear to have arisen only after Kamatari's descendant Fujiwara no Yoritsune became the fourth of the Kamakura shogunate in 1226, some time after the name Kamakura appears in the historical record.「『鎌倉』と鎌足」 ( "Kamakura" and Kamatari), 黒田智 (Kuroda, Satoshi). In Japanese. Paper in Kamakura Ibun Kenkyū, Vol. 3; Tōkyō-dō Shuppan, 2002; It used to be also called 鎌府 (short for Kamakura Bakufu).
The Azuma Kagami describes pre-shogunate Kamakura as a remote, forlorn place, but there is reason to believe its writers simply wanted to give the impression that prosperity had been brought there by the new regime.Takahashi (2005:8–10) To the contrary, it is known that by the Nara period (about 700 AD) there were both temples and shrines. Sugimoto-dera for example was built during this period and is therefore one of the city's oldest temples. The town was also the seat of area government offices and the point of convergence of several land and marine routes. It seems therefore only natural that it should have been a city of a certain importance, likely to attract Yoritomo's attention.
Yoritomo, after the defeat and almost complete extermination of his family at the hands of the Taira clan, managed in the space of a few years to go from being a fugitive hiding from his enemies inside a tree trunk to being the most powerful man in the land. Defeating the Taira clan, Yoritomo became de facto ruler of much of Japan and founder of the Kamakura shogunate, an institution destined to last 141 years and to have immense repercussions over the country's history.
The Kamakura shogunate era is called by historians the Kamakura period and, although its end is clearly set (Siege of Kamakura (1333)), its beginning is not. Different historians put Kamakura's beginning at a different point in time within a range that goes from the establishment of Yoritomo's first military government in Kamakura (1180) to his elevation to the rank of Sei-i Taishōgun in 1192.Takahashi (2005:2) It used to be thought that during this period, effective power had moved completely from the Emperor in Kyoto to Yoritomo in Kamakura, but the progress of research has revealed this was not the case. Even after the consolidation of the shogunate's power in the east, the Emperor continued to rule the country, particularly its west. However, it is undeniable that Kamakura had a certain autonomy and that it had surpassed the technical capital of Japan politically, culturally and economically. The shogunate even reserved for itself an area in Kyoto called 六波羅 where lived its representatives, who were there to protect its interests. In 1179, Yoritomo married Hōjō Masako, an event of far-reaching consequences for Japan. In 1180, he entered Kamakura, building his residence in a valley called Ōkura (in today's Nishi Mikado). The stele on the spot reads:
In 1185, his forces, commanded by his younger brother Minamoto no Yoshitsune, vanquished the Taira and in 1192 he received from Emperor Go-Toba the title of . Yoshitsune's power would however cause Yoritomo's envy; the relationship between the brothers soured, and in 1189 Yoritomo was given Yoshitsune's head pickled in liquor. For the same reason, in 1193 he had his other brother Noriyori killed. Power was now firmly in his hands, but the Minamoto dynasty and its power however were to end as quickly and unexpectedly as they had started.
In 1199, Yoritomo died falling from his horse at the age of 51, and was buried in a temple that had until then housed his tutelary goddess.See article Tomb of Minamoto no Yoritomo He was succeeded by his 17-year-old son Minamoto no Yoriie under the regency of his maternal grandfather Hōjō Tokimasa. A long and bitter fight ensued in which entire clans like the Hatakeyama clan, the Hiki Yoshikazu, and the Wada Yoshimori were wiped out by the Hōjō who wished to get rid of Yoritomo's supporters and consolidate their power. Yoriie did become head of the Minamoto clan and was regularly appointed in 1202 but by that time, real power had already fallen into the hands of the Hōjō clan. Yoriie plotted to take back his power, but failed and was assassinated on July 17, 1204. His six-year-old first son Ichiman had already been killed during political turmoil in Kamakura, while his second son Yoshinari at age six was forced to become a Buddhist priest under the name Kugyō. From then on all power would belong to the Hōjō, and the would be just a figurehead. Since the Hōjō were part of the Taira clan, it can be said that the Taira had lost a battle, but in the end had won the war.
Yoritomo's second son and third Minamoto no Sanetomo spent most of his life staying out of politics and writing poetry, but was nonetheless assassinated in February 1219 by his nephew Kugyō under the giant Ginkgo biloba tree whose trunk still stood at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū until it was uprooted by a storm in the early hours of March 10, 2010. Kugyō himself, the last of his line, was beheaded as a punishment for his crime by the Hōjō just hours later. Barely 30 years into the shogunate, the Seiwa Genji dynasty who had created it in Kamakura had ended. Kamakura: History & Historic Sites – The Kamakura Period, the Kamakura Citizen Net, retrieved on April 27, 2008
In 1293, a severe earthquake killed 23,000 people and seriously damaged the city. In the confusion following the quake, Hōjō Sadatoki, the Shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, carried out a purge against his subordinate Taira no Yoritsuna. In what is referred to as the Heizen Gate Incident, Yoritsuna and 90 of his followers were killed.
The Hōjō regency however continued until Nitta Yoshisada destroyed it in 1333 at the Siege of Kamakura. It was under the regency that Kamakura acquired many of its best and most prestigious temples and shrines, for example Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū, Kenchō-ji, Engaku-ji, Jufuku-ji, Jōchi-ji, and Zeniarai Benten Shrine. The Hōjō family crest in the city is therefore still ubiquitous.
From the middle of the thirteenth century, the fact that the vassals (the ) were allowed to become de facto owners of the land they administered, coupled to the custom that all children could inherit, led to the parcelization of the land and to a consequent weakening of the shogunate. This, and not lack of legitimacy, was the primary cause of the Hōjō's fall.
According to The Institute for Research on World-Systems, Cities, Empires and Global State Formation. Institute for Research on World-Systems Kamakura was the 4th largest city in the world in 1250 AD, with 200,000 people, and Japan's largest, eclipsing Kyoto by 1200 AD. Yet, despite Kamakura's annihilation of Kyoto-based political and military power at the Battle of Dan-no-ura in 1185, and the failure of the Emperor to free himself from Kamakura's control during the Jōkyū War, Takahashi (2005) has questioned whether Kamakura's nationwide political hegemony actually existed. Takahashi claims that if Kamakura ruled the Kantō, not only was the Emperor in fact still the ruler of Kansai region, but during this period the city was in many ways politically and administratively still under the ancient capital of Kyoto. Kamakura was simply a rival center of political, economic and cultural power in a country that had Kyoto as its capital.
Some Kamakura locations important to Nichiren Buddhism are:
In accounts of that disastrous Hōjō defeat it is recorded that nearly 900 Hōjō samurai, including the last three Regents, committed suicide at their family temple, Tōshō-ji, whose ruins have been found in today's Ōmachi. Almost the entire clan vanished at once, the city was sacked and many temples were burned. Many simple citizens imitated the Hōjō, and an estimated total of over 6,000 died on that day of their own hand. In 1953, 556 skeletons of that period were found during excavations near Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's Ichi no Torii in Yuigahama, all of people who had died of a violent death, probably at the hand of Nitta's forces.
The situation in Kantō after 1333 continued to be tense, with Hōjō supporters staging sporadic revolts here and there. In 1335, Hōjō Tokiyuki, son of last shikken Takatoki, tried to re-establish the shogunate by force and defeated Kamakura's de facto ruler Ashikaga Tadayoshi in Musashi, in today's Kanagawa Prefecture.Kamakura Shōkō Kaigijo (2008:24–25) He was in his turn defeated in Koshigoe by Ashikaga Takauji, who had come in force from Kyoto to help his brother.
Takauji, founder of the Ashikaga shogunate which, at least nominally, ruled Japan during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, at first established his residence at the same site in Kamakura where Yoritomo's had been, but in 1336 he left Kamakura in charge of his son Yoshiakira and went west in pursuit of Nitta Yoshisada.Sansom (1977:22) The Ashikaga then decided to permanently stay in Kyoto, making Kamakura instead the capital of the Kamakura-fu (or Kantō-fu), a region including the provinces of Sagami Province, Musashi Province, Awa, Kazusa Province, Shimōsa, Hitachi Province, Kozuke, Shimotsuke, Kai Province, and Izu Province, to which were later added Mutsu Province and Dewa province, making it the equivalent to today's Kanto, plus the Shizuoka and Yamanashi Prefectures.Matsuo (1997:V-VI)
Kamakura's ruler was called , a title equivalent to assumed by Ashikaga Takauji's son Ashikaga Motouji after his nomination to , or deputy , in 1349.Kokushi Daijiten (1983:542) Motouji transferred his original title to the Uesugi clan, which had previously held the hereditary title of shitsuji, and would thereafter provide the . Motouji had been sent by his father because this last understood the importance of controlling the Kantō region and wanted to have an Ashikaga in power there, but the administration in Kamakura was from the beginning characterized by its rebelliousness, so the 's idea never really worked and actually backfired.Jansen (1995:119–120) The era is essentially a struggle for the shogunate between the Kamakura and the Kyoto branches of the Ashikaga clan, because both believed they had a valid claim to power.Matsuo (1997:119–120) In the end, Kamakura had to be retaken by force in 1454. The five recorded by history, all of Motouji's bloodline, were in order Motouji himself, Ujimitsu, Mitsukane, Mochiuji and Shigeuji. The last had to escape to Koga, in today's Ibaraki prefecture, and he and his descendants thereafter became known as the . According to the Shinpen Kamakurashi, a guide book published in 1685, more than two centuries later the spot where the 's mansion had been was still left empty by local peasants in the hope he may one day return.
A long period of chaos and war followed the departure of the last (the Sengoku period). Kamakura was heavily damaged in 1454 and almost completely burned during the Siege of Kamakura (1526). Many of its citizens moved to Odawara when it came to prominence as the home town of the Later Hōjō clan. The final blow to the city was the decision taken in 1603 by the Tokugawa to move the capital to nearby Edo, the place now called Tokyo. The city never recovered and gradually returned to be the small fishing village it had been before Yoritomo's arrival. Edmond Papinot's Historical and Geographical Dictionary of Japan, published in 1910 during the late Meiji period, describes it as follows:
The Shinto shrine also had to destroy Buddhism-related buildings, for example its tower, its midō, and its . Kamakura Shōkō Kaigijo (2008: 28) Some Buddhist temples were simply closed, like Zenkō-ji, to which the now-independent Meigetsu-in used to belong.See article Meigetsu-in
In 1890, the railroad, which until then had arrived just to Ofuna, reached Kamakura bringing in tourists and new residents, and with them a new prosperity. Part of the ancient Dankazura (see above) was removed to let the railway system's new Yokosuka Line pass.
The damage caused by time, centuries of neglect, politics, and modernization was further compounded by nature in 1923. The epicenter of the Great Kantō earthquake that year was deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay, a short distance from Kamakura. Tremors devastated Tokyo, the port city of Yokohama, and the surrounding prefectures of Chiba Prefecture, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka, causing widespread damage throughout the Kantō region.Hammer (2006: 278) It was reported that the sea receded at an unprecedented velocity, and then waves rushed back towards the shore in a great wall of water over seven meters high, drowning some and crushing others beneath an avalanche of waterborne debris. The total death toll from earthquake, tsunami, and fire exceeded 2,000 victims.Hammer (2006: 115–116). Large sections of the shore simply slid into the sea; and the beach area near Kamakura was raised up about six-feet; or in other words, where there had only been a narrow strip of sand along the sea, a wide expanse of sand was fully exposed above the waterline.Hammer (2006:116)
Many temples founded centuries ago have required restoration, and it is for this reason that Kamakura has just one National Treasure in the building category (the Shariden at Engaku-ji). Much of Kamakura's heritage was for various reasons over the centuries first lost and later rebuilt. Kamakura: History and the Historic Sites – Kamakura in the Modern era (the Meiji period) and following sections, The Kamakura Citizen net, retrieved on April 5, 2008]
Before the opening of the Entrances, access on land was so difficult that the Azuma Kagami reports that Hōjō Masako came back to Kamakura from a visit to Sōtōzan temple in Izu bypassing by boat the impassable Inamuragasaki cape and arriving in Yuigahama. Again according to the Azuma Kagami, the first of the Kamakura , Minamoto no Yoritomo, chose it as a base partly because it was his ancestors' land (his ), and partly because of these physical characteristics.
To the north of the city stands Genjiyama (), which then passes behind the Daibutsu and reaches Inamuragasaki and the sea.Kamakura Shōkō Kaigijo (2008: 64)
From the north to the east, Kamakura is surrounded by 六国見 (), 大平山 (), 鷲峰山 (), 天台山 (), and 衣張山 (), which extend all the way to Iijimagasaki and Wakae Island, on the border with Kotsubo and Zushi. From Kamakura's alluvional plain branch off numerous narrow valleys like the Urigayatsu, Shakadōgayatsu, Ōgigayatsu, Kamegayatsu, Hikigayatsu, and Matsubagayatsu valleys.
Kamakura is crossed by the Namerigawa river, which goes from the Asaina Pass in northern Kamakura to the beach in Yuigahama for a total length of about . The river marks the border between Zaimokuza and Yuigahama.
In administrative terms, the municipality of Kamakura borders with Yokohama to the north, with Zushi to the east, and with Fujisawa to the west. It includes many areas outside the Seven Entrances as Yamanouchi, 腰越, Shichirigahama, and Ofuna, and is the result of the fusion of Kamakura proper with the cities of Koshigoe, absorbed in 1939, Ofuna, absorbed in 1948, and with the village of Fukasawa, absorbed in 1948.
Although very small, Yamanouchi is famous for its traditional atmosphere and the presence, among others, of three of the five highest-ranking Rinzai Zen temples in Kamakura, the 鎌倉五山. These three great temples were built here because Yamanouchi was the home territory of the Hōjō clan, a branch of the Taira clan which ruled Japan for 150 years. Among Kita-Kamakura's most illustrious citizens were artist Isamu Noguchi and movie director Yasujirō Ozu. Ozu is buried at Engaku-ji.
Walking from the beach toward the shrine, one passes through three , or Shinto gates, called respectively (), () and (). Between the first and the second lies Geba Yotsukado which, as the name indicates, was the place where riders had to get off their horses in deference to Hachiman and his shrine.
Approximately after the second , the , a raised pathway flanked by cherry trees that marks the center of Kamakura, begins. The becomes gradually wider, giving the effect of looking longer than it really is when viewed from the shrine. Its entire length is under the direct administration of the shrine. Minamoto no Yoritomo made his father-in-law Hōjō Tokimasa and his men carry by hand the stones to build it to pray for the safe delivery of his son Yoriie. The used to go all the way to Geba, but it was drastically shortened during the 19th century to make way for the newly constructed Yokosuka Line.
In Kamakura, wide streets are known as Ōji, narrower streets as Kōji, the small streets that connect the two as zushi, and intersections as tsuji. Komachi Ōji and Ima Kōji run respectively east and west of Wakamiya Ōji, while Yoko Ōji, the road that passes right under , and Ōmachi Ōji, which goes from Kotsubo to Geba River and Hase, run in the east–west direction. Near the remains of Hama no Ōtorii runs Kuruma Ōji Avenue (also called Biwa Koji). These six streets (three running north to south and three east to west) were built at the time of the shogunate and are all still under heavy use. The only one to have been modified is Kuruma Ōji, a segment of which has disappeared.
The architectural heritage of Kamakura is almost unmatched, and the city has proposed some of its historic sites for inclusion in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites list. Although much of the city was devastated in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923, damaged temples and shrines, founded centuries ago, have since been carefully restored.
Some of Kamakura's highlights are:
According to the plaque near the pass itself, the name derives from the fact that third Shikken Hōjō Yasutoki built here a Shakadō (a Buddhist temple devoted to Gautama Buddha) dedicated to his father Yoshitoki's memory. The original location of the temple is unclear, but it was closed some time in the middle Muromachi period.Kamiya Vol. 1 (2006/08: 71 – 72) The Buddharupa statue that is supposed to have been its main object of cult has been declared an Important Cultural Property and is conserved at Daien-ji in Meguro, Tokyo.
Although important, the pass was not considered one of the Entrances because it connected two areas both fully within Kamakura. Its date of creation is unclear, as it is not explicitly mentioned in any historical record, and it could be therefore recent. It seems very likely however that a pass which connected the Kanazawa Road to the Nagoe area called 犬懸坂 and mentioned in the 源平盛哀記 in relation to an 1180 war in Kotsubo between the Miura clan and the Hatakeyama clan is indeed the Shakadō Pass. In any case, the presence of two tombs within it means that it can be dated to at least the Kamakura period. It was then an important way of transit, but it was also much narrower than today and harder to pass.
Inside the pass, there are two small tombs containing some . On the Shakadōgayatsu side of the pass, just before the first houses a small street on the left takes to a large group of called . There rest the bones of some of the hundreds of Hōjō family members who committed suicide at Tōshō-ji after the fall of Kamakura in 1333.
The pass appears many times in some recent Japanese films like "The Blue Light", , and Makiguri no ana. The pass is presently closed to all traffic because of the danger posed by falling rocks.
On April 28, 2010, a day of heavy rain, a large section of rock on the Omachi side of the Shakado Pass gave way, making the road temporarily impassable for pedestrians.
Usually present in the cemetery of most Buddhist temples in the town, they are extremely numerous also in the hills surrounding it, and estimates of their number always put them in the thousands. can be found either isolated or in groups of even 180 graves, as in the 百八やぐら. Many are now abandoned and in a bad state of preservation.
The reason why they were dug is not known, but it is thought likely that the tradition started because of the lack of flat land within the narrow limits of Kamakura's territory. Started during the Kamakura period (1185–1333), the tradition seems to have declined during the following Muromachi period, when storehouses and cemeteries came to be preferred.
True can be found also in the Miura Peninsula, in the Izu Peninsula, and even in distant Awa Province (Chiba).
Tombs in caves can also be found in the Tōhoku region, near Hiroshima and Kyoto, and in Ishikawa Prefecture, however they are not called and their relationship with those in Kanagawa Prefecture is unknown.
Kamakura Station is the terminal for the Enoshima Electric Railway. This railway runs westward to Fujisawa, and part of its route runs parallel to the seashore. After leaving Kamakura Station, trains make eight more station stops in the city. One of them is Hase Station, closest to Hase-dera and Kōtoku-in. The next station on the line is Gokurakuji Station, one of the settings for the 2014 film Our Little Sister.
Kamakura Women's University is the city's sole university.
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