A History of the Japanese People Part 53

(4) Yos.h.i.+mochi 1386 1395 1423 1428

(5) Yos.h.i.+kazu 1407 1423 .... 1425

(6) Yos.h.i.+nori 1394 1428 .... 1441

(7) Yos.h.i.+katsu 1433 1441 .... 1443

(8) Yos.h.i.+masa 1435 1443 1474 1490

(9) Yos.h.i.+hisa 1465 1474 .... 1489

(10) Yos.h.i.+tane (#1) 1465 1490 1493 ....

(11) Yos.h.i.+zumi 1478 1493 1508 1511

Yos.h.i.+tane (#2) .... 1508 1521 1522

(12) Yos.h.i.+haru 1510 1521 1545 1550

(13) Yos.h.i.+teru 1535 1545 .... 1565

(14) Yos.h.i.+hide 1565 1565 .... 1568

(15) Yos.h.i.+aki 1537 1568 1573 1597

The apparent clas.h.i.+ng of dates in the case of the fourth and fifth shoguns, Yos.h.i.+mochi and Yos.h.i.+kazu, is due to the fact that on the death of the latter, in 1425, the former resumed the office and held it until his own death, in 1428.

THE KAMAKURA KWANRYO AND KUBO

Born Died

(1) Motouji 1340 1367

(2) Ujimitsu 1357 1398

(3) Mitsukane 1376 1409

(4) Mochiuji 1398 1439

(5) s.h.i.+geuji 1434 1497

(6) Masatomo .... 1491

(7) Takamoto .... ....

(8) Haruuji .... 1560

(9) Yos.h.i.+uji .... ....

The t.i.tle "kwanryo," as already stated, signifies "governor-general,"

and the region governed was the eight provinces of the Kwanto, together with Izu and Kai. The first of the As.h.i.+kaga kwanryo, Motouji, was Takauji's youngest son, and the following eight names on the above list were direct descendants. But not all had the t.i.tle of kwanryo or wielded the extensive power attached to that office. Only the first four were thus fortunate. From the days of the fifth, s.h.i.+geuji, evil times overtook the family. Driven out of Kamakura by the Uesugi, who had hitherto served as manager (s.h.i.+tsuji), they were obliged to change their domicile to Koga in s.h.i.+mosa; their sphere of jurisdiction was reduced to four provinces, namely, s.h.i.+mosa, s.h.i.+motsuke, Kazusa, and Awa; their official t.i.tle was altered to gosho or kubo, and their former t.i.tle of kwanryo pa.s.sed to the Uesugi family who also replaced them at Kamakura. These things fell out in 1439, when Mochiuji died. To avoid confusion it is necessary to note that the chief official in the shogun's court at Muromachi in Kyoto was also called kwanryo. He had originally been termed "manager"

(s.h.i.+tsuji), but, in 1367, this was changed to "governor-general," and the corresponding functions were practically those discharged by the regent (s.h.i.+kken) in the polity of the old Bakufu. The first Muromachi kwanryo was s.h.i.+ba Yos.h.i.+masa, and it became the ultimate custom to give the post to a member of one of three families, the s.h.i.+ba, the Hosokawa, and the Hatakeyama.

STATE OF THE PROVINCES

When swords were sheathed after the long and wasting War of the Dynasties, the As.h.i.+kaga found themselves in a strong position. Having full control of the Court, they could treat as a rebel anyone opposing them by force of arms, and their partisans were so numerous in Kyoto and its vicinity that they could impose their will upon all.

In the east, the Kwanto was effectually ruled by a branch of their own family, and in the north as well as in the south they were represented by tandai, who governed stoutly and loyally. But trouble began very soon. In Kyushu the office of tandai was held by Imagawa Ryoshun, a man ever memorable in j.a.panese history as the author of the precept that military prowess without education is worse than useless. Ryoshun had been selected for service in Kyushu by the great s.h.i.+tsuji of Muromachi, Hosokawa Yoriyuki, who saw that only by the strongest hands could the turbulent families of the southern island be reduced to order--the s.h.i.+mazu, the Otomo, the Shoni, and the Kikuchi. Everything went to show that Imagawa would have succeeded had not that familiar weapon, slander, been utilized for his overthrow. The Otomo chief persuaded Ouchi Yos.h.i.+hiro to traduce Ryoshun, and since the Ouchi sept exercised great influence in the central provinces and had taken a prominent part in composing the War of the Dynasties, the shogun, Yos.h.i.+mitsu, could not choose but listen to charges coming from such a source. Imagawa Ryoshun was recalled (1396), and thenceforth Kyushu became the scene of almost perpetual warfare which the Muromachi authorities were powerless to check.

THE OUCHI FAMILY

It was to the same Ouchi family that the Muromachi shogun owed his first serious trouble after the close of the War of the Dynasties.

The ancestor of the family had been a Korean prince who migrated to j.a.pan early in the seventh century, and whose descendants, five and a half centuries later, were admitted to the ranks of the samurai. The outbreak of the War of the Dynasties had found the Ouchi ranged on the Southern side, but presently they espoused the As.h.i.+kaga cause, and distinguished themselves conspicuously against the Kikuchi in Kyushu and, above all, in promoting the conclusion of the dynastic struggle.

These eminent services were recognized by Ouchi Yos.h.i.+hiro's appointment to administer no less than six provinces--Nagato, Suwo, Aki, Buzen, Kii, and Izumi. In fact he guarded the western and eastern entrances of the Inland Sea, and held the overlords.h.i.+p of western j.a.pan. At his castle in Sakai, near Osaka, he ama.s.sed wealth by foreign trade, and there he received and harboured representatives of the Kusunoki and Kikuchi families, while at the same time he carried on friendly communications with the Doki, the Ikeda, and the Yamana. In short, he grew too powerful to receive mandates from Muromachi, especially when they came through a kwanryo of the Hatakeyama family who had just risen to that distinction.

Suddenly, in November, 1399, the Ouchi chief appeared in Izumi at the head of a force of twenty-three thousand men, a force which received rapid and numerous accessions. His grounds of disaffection were that he suspected the shogun of a design to deprive him of the two provinces of Kii and Izumi, which were far remote from the other five provinces in his jurisdiction and which placed him within arm's length of Kyoto, and, further, that no sufficient reward had been given to the family of his younger brother, who fell in battle. There were minor grievances, but evidently all were pretexts: the real object was to overthrow Muromachi. The shogun, Yos.h.i.+mitsu, acted with great prompt.i.tude. He placed Hatakeyama Mitsuiye at the head of a powerful army, and on January 18, 1400, Sakai fell and Yos.h.i.+hiro committed suicide. Thereafter the province of Kii was placed under the jurisdiction of the Hatakeyama family, and Izumi under that of Hosokawa, while the s.h.i.+ba ruled in Echizen, Owari, and Totomi. In short, these three families became the bulwarks of the As.h.i.+kaga.

KAMAKURA AND MUROMACHI

An important episode of the Ouchi struggle was that Mitsukane, the third Kamakura kwanryo of the As.h.i.+kaga line, moved an army into Musas.h.i.+ to render indirect a.s.sistance to the Ouchi cause. In truth, from an early period of Kamakura's tenure by an As.h.i.+kaga governor-general of the Kwanto, there had been an ambition to transfer the office of shogun from the Kyoto to the Kamakura branch of the family. The matter was not mooted during Takauji's lifetime, but when, on his demise, the comparatively incompetent Yos.h.i.+akira came into power at Muromachi, certain military magnates of the eastern provinces urged the Kamakura kwanryo, Motouji, to usurp his brother's position. Motouji, essentially as loyal as he was astute, spurned the proposition. But it was not so with his son and successor, Ujimitsu. To him the ambition of winning the shogunate presented itself strongly, and was only abandoned when Uesugi Noriharu committed suicide to add weight to a protest against such an essay. j.a.panese annals contain many records of lives thus sacrificed on the altar of devotion and loyalty. From the outset the Uesugi family were the pillars of the As.h.i.+kaga kwanryo in Kamakura. Uesugi Noriaki served as s.h.i.+tsuji in the time of the first kwanryo, and the same service was rendered by Noriaki's son, Yos.h.i.+nori, and by the latter's nephew, Tomomune, in the time of the second kwanryo, Ujimitsu. Confusing as are the mult.i.tude of names that confront the foreign student of j.a.panese history, it is necessary to note that from the time of their appointment as s.h.i.+tsuji at Kamakura, Yos.h.i.+nori took the family name of Yamanouchi, and Tomomune that of Ogigayatsu.

Balked in his design against Kyoto, Ujimitsu turned his hand against the Nitta, old enemies of his family, and crus.h.i.+ng them, placed the As.h.i.+kaga power on a very firm basis in the Kwanto. His son, Mitsukane, had the gift of handling troops with great skill, and in his time the prestige of the Kamakura kwanryo reached its highest point.

In the eyes of the military men of the eastern provinces, the shogun in distant Kyoto counted for little compared with the governor-general in adjacent Kamakura. The latter's mansion was called gosho (palace); its occupant was termed kubo, an epithet hitherto applied to the shogun only, and the elder and younger branches of the Uesugi family, in which the office of kwanryo of Muromachi was hereditary, were designated Ryo Uesugi (the Two Uesugi). Mitsukane, when he abetted the Ouchi's attempt to overthrow the Kyoto shogun, persuaded himself that he was only carrying out his father's unachieved purpose, and the shogun, Yos.h.i.+mitsu, took no step to punish him, preferring to accept his overtures--made through Uesugi Tomomune.

THE EXTRAVAGANCE OF YOs.h.i.+MITSU

There is little question that whatever applause history can extend to the administration of the third As.h.i.+kaga shogun, Yos.h.i.+mitsu, was won for him by his profoundly sagacious guardian and chief minister, Hosokawa Yoriyuki. After the latter's death, in 1392, many abuses and few meritorious acts appear in the shogun's record. Alike, the wise self-effacement and the admirable frugality which distinguished the Hojo rule were wholly foreign to the mood of Yos.h.i.+mitsu. He insisted on being raised to the post of chancellor of the empire, and he openly spoke of himself as "king," designating as Go-sekke (Five Regent Houses) the families of s.h.i.+ba, Hosokawa, Hatakeyama, Rokkaku, and Yumana. At the ceremony of his invest.i.ture as chancellor (dajo daijiri) he presented to the Throne a sword forged by Kunimitsu; one hundred pieces of white silk; one thousand silver coins; ten tigers'

skins, and fifty pounds of dyed silk. To the ex-Emperor he gave a thousand silver coins; fifty pieces of white silk, and a sword, and among the Imperial princes and Court n.o.bles he distributed ten thousand pieces of silver. Such was his parade of opulence.

ENGRAVING: As.h.i.+KAGA YOs.h.i.+MITSU

The chief obstacle to conferring on him the t.i.tle of chancellor had been that the records contained only one instance of a military man's appointment to that exalted post. That instance was Taira no Kiyomori, whose example should have been deterrent to a Minamoto.

Yos.h.i.+mitsu overcame the difficulty by nominally transferring his military functions to his son Yos.h.i.+mochi (1423), and const.i.tuting himself the patron of literature. It was now that his love of luxury and splendour a.s.sumed its full dimensions. He had already beautified his Muromachi mansion by constructing there a park so s.p.a.cious and so brilliant at all seasons that it went by the name of Hana no Gosho (Palace of Flowers). This he now a.s.signed as a residence for his son and successor, Yos.h.i.+mochi, transferring his own place of abode to the site occupied by the Saionji family, to whom was given in exchange an extensive manor in Kawachi. Here the As.h.i.+kaga chancellor built a palace of such dimensions that sixteen superintendents and twenty a.s.sistant superintendents were required to oversee the work. Most conspicuous was the Kinkaku-ji, or golden pavilion shrine, so called because its interior was gilt, the gold foil being thickly superposed on lacquer varnish. On this edifice, on the adjacent palace, and on a park where deer roamed and n.o.ble pine trees hung over their own shadows in a picturesque lake, immense sums were expended. Works of art were collected from all quarters to enhance the charm of a palace concerning which the bonze Sekkei declared that it could not be exchanged for paradise.

Yos.h.i.+mitsu prayed the Emperor to visit this unprecedentedly beautiful retreat and Go-Komatsu complied. During twenty days a perpetual round of pastimes was devised for the entertainment of the sovereign and the Court n.o.bles--couplet composing, music, football, boating, dancing, and feasting. All this was typical of the life Yos.h.i.+mitsu led after his resignation of the shogun's office. Pleasure trips engrossed his attention--trips to Ise, to Yamato, to Hyogo, to Wakasa, and so forth. He set the example of luxury, and it found followers on the part of all who aimed at being counted fas.h.i.+onable, with the inevitable result that the producing cla.s.ses were taxed beyond endurance. It has to be noted, too, that although Yos.h.i.+mitsu lived in nominal retirement at his Kita-yama palace, he really continued to administer the affairs of the empire.

INTERNATIONAL HUMILIATION

It is not for arrogance, or yet for extravagance, that j.a.panese historians chiefly reproach Yos.h.i.+mitsu. His unpardonable sin in their eyes is that he humiliated his country. From the accession of the Ming dynasty (1368) China made friendly overtures to j.a.pan, especially desiring the latter to check the raids of her corsairs who, as in the days of the Hojo after the repulse of the Mongol armada, so also in the times of the As.h.i.+kaga, were a constant menace to the coastwise population of the neighbouring continent. Upon the att.i.tude of the shogun towards these remonstrances and overtures depended the prosecution of commerce with the Middle Kingdom, and the profits accruing from that commerce were too considerable to be neglected by a ruler like Yos.h.i.+mitsu, whose extravagance required constant accessions of revenue. Moreover, the Muromachi shogun was a disciple and patron of the Zen sect of Buddhism, and the priests of that sect always advocated peaceful intercourse with China, the source of philosophic and literary learning.

All these considerations induced the As.h.i.+kaga chief not only to issue orders for the restraint of the corsairs, but also to receive from the Chinese Court despatches in which he was plainly designated the king of a country tributary to China, and to make answer in language unequivocally endorsing the propriety of such terminology. In one despatch, dated February, 1403, Yos.h.i.+mitsu described himself as a "subject of Ming" and, "prostrate, begged to present twenty horses, ten thousand catties of sulphur, thirty-two pieces of agate, three gold-foil folding screens, one thousand lances, one hundred swords, a suit of armour, and an ink-stone." It is recorded that he even humbled himself so far as to ask for supplies of Chinese coins, and certainly these comparatively pure copper tokens remained largely in circulation in j.a.pan down to Tokugawa times, under the name of Eiraku-tsuho, Eiraku being the j.a.panese sound of the Chinese year-period, Yunglo (1403-1422).

DEATH OF YOs.h.i.+MITSU

Yos.h.i.+mitsu died in 1408. He was accorded by the Court the posthumous rank of Dajo Tenno (ex-Emperor), a proof of the extraordinary confusion of etiquette caused by his arrogant pretensions. The Chinese sovereign, Yunglo, sent a message of sympathy to the j.a.panese potentate's son, Yos.h.i.+mochi, in which the deceased was designated "Prince Kung-hsien," but Yos.h.i.+mochi, though not distinguished for ability, had sufficient wisdom ultimately to adopt the advice of the kwanryo, s.h.i.+ba Yos.h.i.+masa, and to decline the rank of Dajo Tenno, as well as to break off relations with the Ming ruler. Yos.h.i.+mochi also handed over the magnificent edifice at Kita-yama to the Buddhist priesthood.

THE EMPEROR SHOKO