Azuma Kagami

Azuma Kagami

The Azuma Kagami (吾妻鏡/東鑑 – Mirror of Eastern Japan) is a very important literary account of the Kamakura Shogunate written in an awkward form of Chinese aside from a few letters and documents.

Authorship for the book is believed to have been unknown shogunate scribes from the time.

The book itself comprises of 52 chapters covering the period from 1180 to 1266 written chronologically; though it was compiled between 1266 and 1301.

To compile the book a number of sources were drawn from, these being the gempei seisuiki, heike monogatari, meigetsuki, diaries and travel accounts, as well as military family and religious institutional records.

The most famous of the remaining copies is the Hōjō Edition as it was later used by Tokugawa Ieyasu as a manuel for government.¹

Footnotes

1. Kodansha. (1993) ”Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia”. Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd.

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