Japan's Southern Court gave up the sacred regalia in 1392 on a promise to share the throne, the promise was broken, and loyalists stole the jewel back in 1443

In 1336 Emperor Go-Daigo broke with the warlord Ashikaga Takauji, escaped confinement in Kyoto and set up a court at Yoshino. Takauji's Northern Court in Kyoto had its own emperor. The Southern Court held the regalia. For 56 years Japan had two emperors. In 1392 the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu offered terms: recognition of the Southern Court's legitimacy and alternation of the throne between the two lines. Emperor Go-Kameyama returned to Kyoto and handed the regalia to the Northern emperor Go-Komatsu. The terms were not kept. Go-Komatsu passed the throne to his own son. In 1410 Go-Kameyama fled back to Yoshino in protest. Southern loyalists rose in 1414 and 1428 and were defeated. In the 9th month of 1443 the courtier Hino Arimitsu and Southern partisans broke into the palace, set it on fire, and seized the sacred jewel and the sword. They were killed on Mount Hiei. The jewel stayed with Southern descendants in the Yoshino mountains until 1458, when retainers of the ruined Akamatsu house took it back. As their reward the Akamatsu house was restored and given half of Kaga province. In 1911 a school textbook treated the two courts as equal. After a question in the Diet, the Katsura cabinet banned the book, suspended its author and had the Northern Court emperors dropped from the textbook's list of emperors.