Furthermore, 4 months before he passed away, political power was grasped and shifted to the Taira clan; the Genji clan, who had built the Kamakura bakufu (Japanese feudal government headed by a shogun), and the previous Shogun MINAMOTO no Yoriie lost their lives in power struggles with gokenin (an immediate vassal of the shogun in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods) and, seeing this, the autocratic monarch Retired Emperor Gotoba took back the reigns of government from the Imperial Court.
なお、薨去の4ヶ月前には平氏に代わって政権を握り、鎌倉幕府を建てた源氏も前将軍源頼家が御家人の勢力争いの中命を落とし、それを見ていた専制的君主後鳥羽上皇が政治の主導権を朝廷に取り戻そうとしていた。