The Minamoto Remnant Who Burned the Imperial Palace — An Unprecedented Catastrophe in the Year of Sanetomo's Assassination
The year 1219 was one of tumultuous upheaval for the Kamakura shogunate. In January, Shogun Sanetomo was assassinated at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu by his nephew Kugyo, ending the Minamoto shogunal bloodline. Minamoto no Yorimochi, Right Division Stable Master and a collateral descendant of Yoritomo's line, was accused by Hojo Yoshitoki of harboring ambitions for the vacant shogunal position. In July, forces dispatched on Yoshitoki's orders surrounded Yorimochi as he took refuge in the imperial palace complex. After fighting inside the palace grounds, Yorimochi set fire to the buildings and took his own life. The destruction of the imperial palace—which had been rebuilt many times since the Heian period—by warrior conflict was an unprecedented calamity that deeply shocked the court. Historians see it as one episode in the Hojo's systematic elimination of all who carried Minamoto blood, and the twin shocks of the shogun's assassination and the palace's burning became a distant cause of the Jokyu War of 1221.