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Born in Kamakura as the second son of Minamoto no Yoritomo and Hojo Masako. When his elder brother Yoriie was deposed by the Hojo clan in 1203, Sanetomo was installed as the third shogun at age 11. Real power was held by the Hojo — his maternal grandfather Tokimasa and then his uncle Yoshitoki — and Sanetomo was placed in a politically puppet-like position. Yet the innate talent he displayed in literature was genuine. He studied waka poetry under Fujiwara no Teika, and his poetic style, which inherited the grand cadences of the Man'yoshu while carrying deep emotion, was highly esteemed. More than ninety of his poems were selected for imperial anthologies, and his personal collection, the Kinkai Wakashu, is regarded as one of the finest poetry collections of the Kamakura period. The great haiku master Masaoka Shiki praised him: "Sanetomo's poems are one of the pinnacles of Japanese literature." In political life, he famously ordered the construction of a large vessel intending to sail to China (the Song dynasty), which failed to launch at Yuigahama beach. On 27 January 1219, while visiting Tsurugaoka Hachimangu to offer prayers for his appointment as Minister of the Right, he was assassinated by his nephew Kugyo. He was 27 years old. The direct line of Minamoto shoguns ended here, and the Kamakura Shogunate passed to the regency (shikken) governance of the Hojo clan.

A poet-spirited shogun who poured his soul into literature despite holding political power. Even within the political constraints imposed by the Hojo, he found his outlet for self-expression in waka poetry, and embodied his longing for distant lands in the ill-fated plan to sail to the Song dynasty. The tragic death he met at a young age, combined with his poetic life, has stirred deep empathy in people down through the ages.

The Kinkai Wakashu, with its vigorous and commanding poetic style, exerted a strong influence on later waka poets and was highly valued by modern literary figures including Masaoka Shiki, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, and Saito Mokichi. As the "poet-shogun of Kamakura" he is remembered in connection with devotion to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, and the brevity of his life — cut short at 27 — only deepens the resonance of his verse.