Yoritomo and the founding of the first Bakufu : the origins of dual government in Japan

This book is a much expanded and wholly rewritten treatment of the subject of the author s first book, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan, published in 1974.

In this new version, the warrior and medieval character of Japan s first shogunate is significantly de-emphasized, thus requiring not only a new title, but also a new book.

The author s new view of the final decades of twelfth-century Japan is one of a less revolutionary set of experiences and a smaller achievement overall than previously thought.

The pivotal figure, Minamoto Yoritomo, retains his dominant role in establishing the dual polity of Court and Bakufu, but his successes are now explained in terms of more limited objectives.

A new regime was fit into an environment that was still basically healthy and vibrant, leading not to the substitution of one government for another, but rather to the emergence of a new authority that would have to interact with the old.