page_title: Nanboku-chō period
section_title: The Kemmu Restoration: 1333–1336
hierarchical_section_title: Nanboku-chō period / The Kemmu Restoration: 1333–1336
caption_attribution_description: 日本語: 後醍醐天皇御像
context_page_description: The Nanboku-chō period, spanning from 1336 to 1392, was a period that occurred during the formative years of the Muromachi bakufu of Japanese history.
  During this period, there existed a Northern Imperial Court, established by Ashikaga Takauji in Kyoto, and a Southern Imperial Court, established by Emperor Go-Daigo in Yoshino.
  Ideologically, the two courts fought for fifty years, with the South giving up to the North in 1392. However, in reality the Northern line was under the power of the Ashikaga shogunate and had little real independence.
  Since the 19th century the Emperors of the Southern Imperial Court have been considered the legitimate Emperors of Japan. Other contributing factors were the Southern Court's control of the Japanese imperial regalia, and Kitabatake Chikafusa's work Jinnō Shōtōki, which legitimized the South's imperial court despite their defeat.
  The consequences of events in this period continue to be influential in modern Japan's conventional view of the Tennō Seika. Under the influence of State Shinto, an Imperial decree dated March 3, 1911, established that the legitimate reigning monarchs of this period were the Southern Court.
context_section_description: In the spring of 1333, the Emperor Go-Daigo and his supporters believed that the moment had arrived to restore the glory of the imperial court.  The Emperor Daigo (AD 901–923), who lived at a time when the court had no rivals and effective rule was exercised directly from the throne, became Go-Daigo's adopted name and model.  Of cardinal importance was the ideology that emerged with the Kemmu Restoration: it was a conscious movement to restore the imperial power vis-a-vis the warriors.  Two of the movement's greatest spokesmen were Prince Morinaga and Kitabatake Chikafusa.  Prince Morinaga was Daigo's son, and archrival to Ashikaga Takauji: he advocated the militarization of the nobles as a necessary step towards effective rule.  Kitabatake Chikafusa epitomized what Prince Morinaga was looking for: a Kyoto noble who became the greatest of the imperialist generals, combining the ways of the warrior to his noble upbringing.  During the long siege in Hitachi (1338–43), Chikafusa wrote the Jinnō Shōtōki, one of the most influential works on the legitimacy of the Japanese imperial system ever written. This became one of the ideological bases of the Meiji Restoration of the 19th century.
  However, the Kemmu Restoration was a failure.  It failed for a number of reasons, chief among these Emperor Go-Daigo's unrealistic desire to return to what he perceived to have been a golden age. Although there is no evidence he wanted to go back to Heian era policies like Chikafusa, there is clear evidence he believed it possible to restore not only imperial power, but also its culture. He even wrote a treatise called Kenmu Nenchū Gyōji for the purpose of reviving court ceremonies that had fallen out of use. In 1336 Ashikaga Takauji rebelled against the imperial court and proclaimed the beginning of a new shogunate.  After his proclamation, he was forced to retreat to Kyūshū after the imperialist forces of Kitabatake Akiie attacked and defeated him near Kyoto.  This betrayal of the Kemmu Restoration by Takauji blackened his name in later periods of Japanese history, and officially started the Nanboku-chō War.  Previous historical views tried to look at the failure of the Restoration at the level of ineffectiveness in the area of rewarding lands to the many petitions that flooded in from samurai; however, it is now clear that, at the most important level, the judicial organs that determined land dispute cases, the Restoration was effective.  This forces us to conclude that Takauji's rebellion and desire to create a new warrior regime was a prime determinant in the Restoration's failure. His rebellion encouraged a large body of dissatisfied warriors (there were always those whose petitions were not granted) who desired to see the creation of another military regime modeled after Kamakura.
  The Nanboku-chō War was an ideological struggle between loyalists who wanted the Emperor back in power, and those who believed in creating another military regime modeled after Kamakura. It was as if the two previous periods in Japanese history, the Heian and the Kamakura, were clashing on the ideological level.  Noble warriors like Kitabatake Chikafusa were pragmatic about the need for warriors to participate in the Restoration on the instrumental level, but on the ideological level a severe divergence between Chikafusa and Takauji polarized the leaders for many years to come. Hammered together during wartime, the emergence of the Muromachi regime followed on the heels of the Restoration's failure.
caption: Emperor Go-Daigo
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