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is the collective term for the very few most powerful men attached to the court of the Emperor of Japan in pre- Meiji eras. The kugyō was broadly divided into two groups: the , comprising the Chancellor of the Realm, the Minister of the Left, and the Minister of the Right; and the , comprising the Major Counsellor, the Middle Counsellor, the , and members of the Japanese court of the third rank or higher.
As part of the Meiji reforms, a single aristocratic class, the kazoku, was created in 1869 by merging the kuge (the court nobility in Kyoto, of which the kugyō was a part) and the daimyo (the feudal land holders and warriors). In the 1870s, the organizational structure of the court itself was also modernized.
In the period after the Second World War, the kazoku was abolished, as a part of post-war Japanese reforms. The remaining political powers of the Emperor were transferred to the constitutional government of Japan, and the responsibility for state matters concerning the Emperor and the Imperial family was consolidated entirely into the Imperial Household Agency.
, also known as or , was the second son of the second Kamakura shogun of Japan, Minamoto no Yoriie. At the age of six, after his father was killed in Shuzenji in Izu, he became his uncle Sanetomo's adopted son and, thanks to his grandmother Hōjō Masako's intercession, a disciple of Songyō, Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's bettō (head priest). After his tonsure he was given the Buddhist name "Kugyō" replacing his childhood name Yoshinari. He then went to Kyōto to take his vows, coming back at age 18 to become Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū's new bettō, the shrine's fourth. In 1219 he murdered his uncle Sanetomo on the stone stairs at Tsurugaoka Hachiman-gū in the shogunal capital of Kamakura, an act for which he was himself slain on the same day.