Failure of Go-Daigo's Policies
The Emperor reclaimed the property of some manors his family had previously lost control of, rewarding with them, among others, Buddhist temples like Tō-ji and Daitoku-ji in the hope to obtain their support. He however failed to protect the rights of tenants and workers, whose complaints poured into the monasteries.
He didn't understand the importance to him of the warrior class either, because he never properly rewarded his minor samurai supporters, as he could have done using lands from the confiscated Hōjō lands, indulging instead in favoritism. These errors are the key to understanding the events of the next few decades. After rewarding religious institutions, he prepared to redistribute Hōjō lands, and samurai came to him in great numbers to lay their claims. The biggest rewards were given to samurai, among them Nitta Yoshisada, the man who had destroyed the Kamakura shogunate, and Ashikaga Takauji. In so doing, however, he failed to return control of the provinces to civilians. But he made his greatest error when he failed to properly reward minor warriors who had supported him. The tribunals set up to the purpose were inefficient and too inexperienced for the task, and corruption was rife. Samurai anger was made worse by the fact Go-Daigo, wanting to build a palace for himself but having no funds, levied extra taxes from the samurai class. A wave of enmity towards the nobility started to run through the country, growing stronger with time. The Taiheiki also records that, although Takauji and Yoshisada were richly rewarded, the offices of shugo and jito in more than fifty provinces went to nobles and court bureaucrats, leaving no spoils for the warriors By the end of 1335 the Emperor and the nobility had lost all support of the warrior class.
Read more about this topic: Kenmu Restoration
Famous quotes containing the words failure and/or policies:
“There is no loneliness greater than the loneliness of a failure. The failure is a stranger in his own house.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)