Kenmu Restoration - Objectives of The Restoration

Objectives of The Restoration

When Emperor Go-Daigo ascended the throne in 1318, he immediately manifested his intention to rule without interference from the military in Kamakura. Historical documents show that, disregarding evidence to the contrary, he and his advisers believed that a revival of the Imperial House's and of the nobility's fortunes was possible, and that the Kamakura's shogunate was the greatest and most obvious of the obstacles.

Another situation that begged for a solution was the land-ownership problem posed by the manors and their lands (see the article shōen). The great landowners (shugo (governors) and jitō (manor's lord)), with their political independence and their tax exemptions were impoverishing the government and undermining its authority, and Kitabatake Chikafusa, Go-Daigo's future chief adviser, discussed the situation in his works on succession. Chikafusa admitted that nobody had any intention of abolishing those privileges, so the hope of success on this front was from the beginning clearly very dim. What he planned to replace shugo and jitō with is unclear, but he surely had no intention of sharing power with the samurai class. However serious the land ownership problem, Go-Daigo and his advisers made no serious effort to solve it, partly because it was samurai from the manors in the western provinces that had defeated the Bakufu for him. In such a situation, any effort to regulate the manors was bound to cause resentment among key allies.