herefore they asked the Emperor Go-Toba to nominate
one of his younger sons, and on receiving a refusal, they were fain
to be content with a member of the Fujiwara family, who had long held
the Court in the hollow of their hands. This nomination was never
intended to carry with it any real authority. The shoguns were mere
puppets. During the interval of 114 years between the death of
Sanetomo (1219) and the fall of the Hojo (1333), there were six of
these faineant officials:

Age at Age at
Appn't Depos'n

Fujiwara Yoritsune, 1219-1244 2 27

Yoritsugu 1244-1252 5 13

Prince Munetaka, 1252-1266 10 24
elder brother of Go-Fukakusa

Prince Koreyasu, son of Munetaka 1266-1289 3 26

Prince Hisaakira, son of Go-Fukakusa 1289-1308 13 32

Prince Morikuni, son of Hisaakira 1308-1333 7 32

The record shows that all these officials were appointed at an age
when independent thought had not yet become possible, and that they
were removed as soon as they began to think for themselves. It will
be observed that there is a palpable break in the uniformity of the
list. Yoritsugu alone was stripped of office while still in his
teens. That was because his father, the ex-shogun, engaged in a plot
to overthrow the Hojo. But the incident was also opportune. It
occurred just at the time when other circumstances combined to
promote the ambition of the Hojo in the matter of obtaining an
Imperial prince for shogun. The throne was then occupied by
Go-Fukakusa (the eighty-ninth sovereign), a son of Go-Saga (the
eighty-eighth sovereign), who, as we shall see, owed his elevation to
the influence exercised by Hojo Yasutoki after the Shokyu war. Now it
happened that, in 1252, a conspiracy against Go-Saga was found to
have been fomented by the head of that branch of the Fujiwara family
from which the Kamakura shoguns were taken. The conspiracy was a
thing of the past and so were its principal fomenters, but it served
as a conclusive reason for not creating another Fujiwara shogun.
Prince Munetaka, an elder brother of the reigning Emperor, was
chosen, and thus the last four Bakufu shoguns were all of Imperial
blood.

Their lineage, however, did not avail much as against Bakufu
arbitrariness. T