Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
COUNTRY AT WAR
After completing his takeover, Emperor Go-Daigo refused to reward his warriors, favour-
ing the aristocracy and priesthood instead. In the early 14th century this led to a revolt by
the warrior Ashikaga Takauji, who had previously supported Go-Daigo. When Ashikaga's
army entered Kyoto, Go-Daigo fled to Mt Hiei and sent the imperial Sacred Treasures to
Ashikaga in conciliation. Ashikaga installed a new emperor and appointed himself shōgun,
initiating the Muromachi period (1333-1568). Go-Daigo escaped from Kyoto and, the
Sacred Treasures he had sent to Ashikaga being counterfeit, set up a rival court at Yoshino
in a mountainous region near Nara. Rivalry between the two courts continued for 60 years
until the Ashikaga made an unfulfilled promise that the imperial lines would alternate.
Kyoto gradually recovered its position of political significance and, under the control of
the art-loving Ashikaga, enjoyed an epoch of cultural and artistic fruition. Talents now con-
sidered typically Japanese flourished, including such arts as landscape painting, classical
nō drama, ikebana (flower arranging) and
chanoyu
(tea ceremony). Many of Kyoto's fam-
places of rest and solitude. Eventually formal trade relations were reopened with Ming Ch-
ina and Korea, although Japanese piracy remained a bone of contention with both.
The Ashikaga ruled, however, with diminishing effectiveness in a land slipping steadily
into civil war and chaos. By the 15th century Kyoto had become increasingly divided as
daimyō
(domain lords) and local barons fought for power in bitter territorial disputes that
were to last for a century. In 1467 the matter of succession to the shōgunate between two
feudal lords, Yamana and Hosokawa, ignited the most devastating battle in Kyoto's history.
With Yamana's army of 90,000 camped in the southwest and Hosokawa's force of 100,000
quartered in the north of the city, Kyoto became a battlefield. The resulting Ōnin-no-ran
(Ōnin War; 1467-77) wreaked untold havoc on the city; the Imperial Palace and most of
the city were destroyed by fighting and subsequent fires, and the populace was left in ruin.
The war marked the rapid decline of the Ashikaga family and the beginning of the
Sengoku-jidai (Warring States period), a protracted struggle for domination by individual
daimyō
that spread throughout Japan and lasted until the start of the Azuchi-Momoyama
period in 1568.
