is the name of one of the administrative units ("towns", chō or machi) of

Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...

, a

city A city is a human settlement of a substantial size. The term "city" has different meanings around the world and in some places the settlement can be very small. Even where the term is limited to larger settlements, there is no universally agree ...

located in

Kanagawa is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Kanagawa Prefecture is the List of Japanese prefectures by population, second-most populous prefecture of Japan at 9,221,129 (1 April 2022) and third-dens ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

, about 50 km south-south-west of

Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...

. Nikaidō lies immediately to the east of

Nishi Mikado is the name of a neighborhood (a ) in Kamakura, a city located in Kanagawa, Japan, about 50 km south-south-west of Tokyo. Nishi Mikado lies north-east of Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū. Etymology of the name In 1180 the locality of in today's Ni ...

and Yukinoshita, and used to be called Higashi Mikado. The name is still sometimes used. In it lie famous temples and shrines like

Zuisen-ji is a Buddhist temples in Japan, Buddhist temple of the Rinzai sect in Nikaidō's in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura, Japan.Kamiya (2008:98-102) During the Muromachi period it was the bodaiji, family temple of the Ashikaga rulers of Kamakura (the '' ...

, Egara Tenjinsha, Kamakura-gū and Kakuon-ji.Shirai (1976:231) It's in Nikaidō that first Kamakura shōgun

Minamoto no Yoritomo was the founder and the first shogun of the Kamakura shogunate, ruling from 1192 until 1199, also the first ruling shogun in the history of Japan.Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric. (2005). "Minamoto no Yoriie" in . He was the husband of Hōjō Masako ...

built ,Note that these characters are more often read Eifuku-ji, and that Japanese themselves in this particular case often pronounce them incorrectly. one of his most important temples. It was probably part, together with Yukinoshita, of the Ōkura Valley that gave its name to the

Ōkura Bakufu (also called is the name given in Japan to the first government of the Kamakura shogunate, shōgun Minamoto no Yoritomo. The name is that of the location in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, where Yoritomo's palace used to stand. ...

, Yoritomo's first government.

Etymology of the name

After his wars with the

Taira clan The was one of the four most important Japanese clans, clans that dominated Japanese politics during the Heian period, Heian period of History of Japan, Japanese history – the others being the Minamoto clan, Minamoto, the Fujiwara clan, Fuji ...

and Ōshū's Fujiwara clan, in 1189 shōgun Yoritomo founded a temple called Yōfuku-ji to comfort the souls of the samurai that had died in them.Kusumoto (2002:44-45) The temple was erected in a location next to today's Kamakura-gū. Its main hall was a two-story building called Nikaidō, which was copied from Chuson-ji's in Hiraizumi, a building the shōgun had greatly admired. In time, that famous building gave its name to the entire area where it stood. According to another theory, however, the name comes from that of an important clan vassal of the Minamoto, also called Nikaidō, because that's where the clan's mansion used to stand. Yōfuku-ji was expanded several times, finally becoming a great temple with many pavilions and a great artificial lake. It was often visited by Yoritomo, his wife

Hōjō Masako was a Japanese politician who exercised significant power in the early years of the Kamakura period, which was reflected by her contemporary sobriquet of the "nun shogun". She was the wife of Minamoto no Yoritomo, and mother of Minamoto no Yori ...

, and their descendants, who liked spending time there. The temple no longer exists, but exactly when and how it was destroyed isn't known. We do know that at the end of the

Muromachi period The , also known as the , is a division of Japanese history running from approximately 1336 to 1573. The period marks the governance of the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate ( or ), which was officially established in 1338 by the first Muromachi ...

it stopped appearing in written records and that it burned down many times, the last we know of in 1405. The area where it used to stand is now public property, and the city of Kamakura plans to turn it into an historical park.

Notes

References

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External links

Yōfuku-ji
site dedicated to the temple, with CG reconstructions of its main structures {{DEFAULTSORT:Nikaido Kamakura, Kanagawa