The Warrior in the Courthouse Line
- Civilization
- Japan
- Occupation
- Gokenin — vassal warrior of the Kamakura shogunate, in court
- Material
- Paper & land
- Period
- c. 1280 AD
A day in the life of a samurai in feudal Japan, 1280 — the gokenin vassal warrior whose real battles ran through the Kamakura courts: decades-long inheritance suits, an eavesdropper who lost his case for creeping, and the scroll a veteran filed to claim his reward.
A government that was mostly a courthouse
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Sources
- Goseibai Shikimoku (1232), arts. 14, 29–31, 35 — summonses, default after three ignored summonses, delay complaints, appeals, judicial bias
- Jeffrey P. Mass, The Kamakura Bakufu: A Study in Documents (1976) — 177 translated Kamakura edicts and land records
- Azuma kagami (late 1226) — Nakahara Yasusada vs Ōya Ieshige: the eavesdropping, expulsion, the three-day rule, and the award to Ieshige
- Carolina Negri, 'Izayoi nikki: The History of a Disputed Heritage in the Kamakura Period', Annali di Ca' Foscari 56 (2020) — Nun Abutsu and the 1279–1313 Hosokawa case
- Kamakura ibun docs. 4534, 4605; Kamakura bakufu saikyōjōshū doc. 57 — the Kongōbuji vs Miyoshi jitō suit over Ōta estate, 1232–35
- Delmer M. Brown, 'The Japanese Tokusei of 1297', Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 12 (1949), 188–206; Tōji Hyakugō Monjo — the Einin debt-cancellation edict
- Thomas D. Conlan, In Little Need of Divine Intervention (2001) — Takezaki Suenaga's scrolls and the reward-claim process
- Mōko Shūrai Ekotoba (c. 1293; later copy) — National Diet Library digital collections, public domain
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