Hōjō Tokimune

Hōjō Tokimune was the shikken, or regent, of the Kamakura shogunate during the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281. He directed defensive preparations, rejected demands for submission and became associated with the mobilisation of samurai resistance and Zen discipline.

As shikken of the Kamakura shogunate, Hōjō Tokimune directed Japan’s response to the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281; defensive preparations in Kyushu and the survival of the shogunate made his rule central to later memory of the invasions.

Jeanne Blanchet’s Kamikaze places Hōjō Tokimune at the head of the Kamakura government as Kublai Khan demands Japan’s submission and invasion fleets approach Kyūshū. His refusal to accept Mongol suzerainty provides the political decision behind the novel’s mobilisation of samurai and coastal defences, while the attacks of 1274 and 1281 turn the regent’s resistance into the national crisis surrounding Atsuko and Ichirō’s private story.