Book Review

Asia

Jeffrey P. Mass spent his career as a historian of medieval Japan challenging received scholarly wisdom. Thus it seems fitting that, in this final work in his specialty prior to his untimely death, the wisdom that he questioned should have been his own. The book is a reworking of his first monograph, Warrior Government in Early Medieval Japan (1974). The new title exemplifies important changes in Mass's views over the last twenty-five years. No longer is the late twelfth century, the age of the military leader Minamoto Yoritomo, thought to have marked the eclipse of the civilian aristocracy as provincial warriors rose to dominate the court. The term "medieval," moreover, with its links to warrior hegemony in Western historiography, comes under attack as well. The result is a reassessment not only of Yoritomo's accomplishments but also of the extent to which his Kamakura period (1185–1333) belongs to the medieval rather than to the late classical age.

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After his victory over the Taira (as well as his own relatives) in the Genpei civil war that ended in 1185, Yoritomo established a base in the town of Kamakura, geographically far removed from the civilian court in Kyoto. There he established a control structure called the bakufu, which held jurisdiction over his own men and exercised considerable influence on the court. As pictured by mid-thirteenth-century chroniclers in the Azuma kagami, Yoritomo organized his followers into two administrative networks: the jit, who managed estates held by civilian aristocratic proprietors, and the shugo, military governors of provinces who served alongside civilian counterparts.

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