There were also many minor matters of administration which Yoritomo, in the few remaining years of his life, put in order. He obtained from the emperor permission to levy a tax on the agricultural products of the country, from which he defrayed the expenses of the military government. He established tribunals for the hearing and determining of causes, and thus secured justice in the ordinary affairs of life. He forbade the priests and monks in the great Buddhist monasteries, who had become powerful and arrogant, to bear arms, or to harbor those bearing arms. [Illustration] Yoritomo. In all these administrative reforms Yoritomo was careful always to secure the assent and authority of the imperial court.(124) In no case did he assume or exercise independent authority. In this way was introduced at this time that system of dual government which continued until the resignation of the Tokugawa Shōgun in 1868. After his first visit to Kyōto, in A.D. 1190, Yoritomo devoted the remaining years of his life to the confirmation of his power and the encouragement of the arts of peace. In A.D. 1195 he made a second magnificent visit to Kyōto and remained four months. It is because of these peaceful results, which followed the long internecine struggles, that the Japanese regard Yoritomo as one of their most eminent and notable men. Under the influence of his court Kamakura grew to be a great city and far outranked even Kyōto in power and activity, though not in size. In the autumn of the year A.D. 1198, when returning from the inspection of a new bridge over the Sagami river, he had a fall from his horse which seriously injured him. He died from the effects of this fall in the early part of the following year, in the fifty-third year of his age. He had wielded the unlimited military power for the last fifteen years. His death was almost as much of an epoch in the history of Japan as his life had been. We shall see in the chapters which follow the deplorable results of that system of effeminacy and nepotism, of abdication and regency, which Yoritomo had to resist, and which, had he lived twenty years more, his country might have escaped. CHAPTER VII. EMPEROR AND SHŌGUN.