Kamakura (鎌倉) is a seaside town an hour south of Tokyo that was once, briefly, the capital of Japan. For a century and a half it ruled the country as the seat of the first samurai government, and it still wears that history openly: temples and shrines tucked into wooded valleys, a giant bronze Buddha gazing out over the trees, and hiking trails linking one to the next.
The first samurai capital
In 1185 the warlord Minamoto no Yoritomo established the bakufu (幕府), a military government, at Kamakura, ringed by hills on three sides and the sea on the fourth, a naturally defensible base far from the imperial court in Kyoto. This began the Kamakura period, the age when real power passed from the aristocracy to the samurai. The shogunate fell in 1333, and the capital of power later moved on, but the town's temples and its warrior-era atmosphere remained. At its heart stands Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, the great shrine dedicated to the god of war and protector of the Minamoto clan, approached along a broad avenue that runs down to the sea.
The Great Buddha and the temples of Zen
Kamakura's most famous sight is the Daibutsu (大仏), the Great Buddha of Kōtoku-in: a bronze figure over eleven metres tall, cast in the 13th century, that has sat serenely in the open air ever since a tsunami swept away the hall that once housed it. The town was also a cradle of Japanese Zen, and its mountain temples, Kenchō-ji and Engaku-ji among them, remain important training monasteries. Combined with the beaches, the hydrangea-lined temple steps of early summer, and the trails through the hills, this makes Kamakura one of the most popular day trips from Tokyo.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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幕府 (bakufu): literally "tent government," from the field headquarters of a general; the term for the samurai shogunate that ruled Japan from Kamakura, then Kyoto, then Edo.
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大仏 (daibutsu): "great Buddha," the name for any monumental Buddha statue; Kamakura's and Nara's are the two most celebrated.