sa was too powerful to be so easily dispensed with.
Yoriiye was compelled to yield, and he retired to a monastery and gave up
his offices. Not content with this living retirement, Tokimasa contrived
to have him assassinated. Semman, his brother, was appointed
_sei-i-tai-shogun_, and his name changed to Sanetomo. But Sanetomo did not
long enjoy his promotion, because his nephew, the son of his murdered
predecessor, deemed him responsible for his father's murder, and took
occasion to assassinate him. Then in turn the nephew was put to death for
this crime, and thus by the year A.D. 1219 the last of the descendants of
the great Yoritomo had perished. In the meantime Tokimasa had, A.D. 1205,
retired to a Buddhist monastery in his sixty-eighth year, and in A.D.
1216, when he was seventy-eight, he died. The court at Kamakura was now
prepared to go on in its career of effeminacy after the pattern of that at
Kyoto.

Mesago, the widow of Yoritomo and daughter of Tokimasa, although she too
had taken refuge in a Buddhist nunnery, continued to exercise a ruling
control in the affairs of the government. She solicited from the court at
Kyoto the appointment of Yoritsune, a boy of the Fujiwara family, only two
years old, as _sei-i-tai-shogun_ in the place of the murdered Sanetomo.
The petition was granted, and this child was entrusted to the care of the
Hojo, who, as regents(125) of the shogun, exercised with unlimited sway
the authority of this great office. The situation of affairs in Japan at
this time was deplorable. Go-Toba and Tsuchi-mikado were both living in
retirement as ex-emperors. Juntoku was the reigning emperor, who was under
the influence and tutelage of the ex-Emperor Go-Toba. Fretting under the
arrogance of the Hojo, Go-Toba undertook to resist their claims. But
Yoshitoku, the Hojo regent at this time, quickly brought the Kyoto court
to terms by the use of his military power. The ex-Emperor Go-Toba was
compelled to become a monk, and was exiled to the island of Oki. The
Emperor Juntoku was forced to abdicate, and was banished to Sado, and a
grandson of the former Emperor Takakura placed on the throne. Even the
ex-Emperor Tsuchi-mikado, who had not taken any part in the conspiracy,
was sent off to the island of Shikoku. The lands that had belonged to the
implicated nobles were confiscated and distributed by Yoshitoku among his
own adherents. The power of the Hojo family was thus raised to its supreme
point. They ruled b