Ashikaga Shogunate

Wrote Kokichi Katsu. He was a low-ranking samurai from the Tokugawa Shogunate which came later than the Ashikaga Shogunate (1336–1573). Yet what unites these two distinct periods is the rule by a military government of a feudal society in Japan.

Fig. 1 - Takauji Ashikaga, the founder of the Ashikaga shogunate, 14th-15th century. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Ashikaga Shogunate: Background

Between 1192–1868, Japan was a feudal society ruled by the shoguns.

Feudalism described the unequal relationship between the feudal, landowning lords and their subordinate vassals.

Often, vassals, who were farmers, gained access to the feudal land in exchange for military and other types of service.

Shogunate Timeline

There were four main periods in the history of feudal Japan.

Ashikaga Era: Summary

The Kamakura Period came to be replaced with three years called Kenmu Restoration. At this time, Go-Daigo (1288-1339), an Emperor, unsuccessfully tried to reclaim the throne. Historians consider the year 1336 to be the start of the Ashikaga Period.

At this time, Takauji Ashikaga, with the backing of other warriors, established a new shogunate in Japan.

Ashikaga Shogunate has two important periods:

Other important developments include:

• The first contact with the Europeans, the Portuguese, who arrived in Japan (Southern Kyushu in the southwest of Japan) in 1543;
• Good trade relations with the Ming Dynasty in China;
• Artistic and cultural developments linked to Zen Buddhism.

Fig. 3 - Emperor Go-Daigo, 1339. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Samurai

Samurai were the warrior class in feudal Japan for close to 700 years. This class had different ranks, which were hereditary, as part of Japan's strict social structure. The samurai were vassals to daimyō, the feudal lords.

Fig. 2 - Samurai of Ashikaga Shogunate. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Feudal Society

The Japanese society ruled by different shogunates was feudal and rigidly structured. It comprised an Emperor, who had a ceremonial role at this time. The shoguns were the military governors at the top of the social hierarchy. Under them were feudal lords, daimyō. Their vassals were the samurai who performed military service. There were also peasants (such as serfs tied to the land), merchants, and priests in both Buddhism and Shinto. Merchants were considered to be of low social status, unlike certain European societies.

Social mobility generally did not exist, except through military conflict and power struggles, and social status was hereditary. Similarly, men and women had strictly defined social roles, although there were some exceptions to women's agency in upper-class families.

Arts and Culture

Arts and culture flourished during the Ashikaga Shogunate's rule.

Indeed, Zen Buddhism was a focal point for Japanese culture at this time. Its influence included:

• Education;
• Ink painting;
• Tea ceremonies;
• Literature;
• Theater (Noh (drama) and Kyōgen (comedy)).

Some historians also divide this period into:

• Kitayama (northern mountain) culture;
• Higashiyama (eastern mountain) culture.

First Contact with the Europeans

In part, because of Japan's remote island geography, the country did not come in contact with the Europeans until their Age of Discovery and Conquest, which began in the late 1400s. At this time, several European empires engaged in colonization abroad, including:

The Portuguese arrived in Kyushu, Japan's southern island, in 1543. As a result, Japan temporarily opened up to trade with Europe. This period became known as the Nanban trade (1543-1614).

Cultural exchange was also an important factor.

Ashikaga Shogunate: Map

The capital of Ashikaga Shogunate was in present-day Kyoto. The map of Japan generally coincided with the present-day counterpart, with some exceptions, such as the exclusion of parts of Hokkaido.

Fig 4 - Map of feudal Japan in a later period by Saisuke Yamamura. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Ashikaga Shogunate: War

Under Ashikaga Shogunate's rule, the country was embroiled in a protracted civil war called the Sengoku period (1467–1615).

The Sengoku era began with the Ōnin War (1467-1477) in which a regional conflict between a deputy of the Shogun and a daimyō escalated into a countrywide civil war.

A century and a half of conflict involved in-fighting between different feudal lords challenging each other for power. In contrast, the Tokugawa Shogunate that arose in the early 1600s was known as one of peace.

Ashikaga Shogunate: Fall

Conflicts between the daimyō led to a prolonged period of warfare, Sengoku, which weakened the Ashikaga Shogunate:

In 1565, the hereditary shogun Yoshiteru Ashikaga was murdered. Nobunaga Oda, a daimyō, managed to get Ashikaga’s brother, Yoshiaki, into power. The latter, however, was weak, and Oda expelled him from the Shogunate’s capital, Kyoto. In 1573, the Ashikaga Shogunate dissolved.

• Nobunaga Oda (1534 –1582) came to be known as the Great Unifier of Japan.
• This daimyō was from an influential Oda family. His first attempts to unify a weakened and decentralized Japan began in the 1560s by fighting the other daimyō. He succeeded in overthrowing the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1573 conquering much of Honshu, Japan’s main island, by the early 1580s. Oda was killed in 1582.
• The other two men credited with unifying Japan at this time were Oda's retainers (military vassals):
  • Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543 – 1616);
  • Hideyoshi Toyotomi (1536 – 1598).
• These two retainers finished what Oda began. Japan was united, and the long period of war came to an end shortly afterward.

Fig. 5 - Ukiyo-e of Oda Nobunaga, by Kuniyoshi Utagawa, 1830. Source: Wikipedia Commons (public domain).

Ashikaga Shogunate: Significance

The Ashikaga (Muromachi) Period was one of political weakness in Japanese history. The country remained decentralized with rivaling feudal lords, which eventually precipitated a long military conflict. Nonetheless, traditional Japanese culture, such as the arts and tea ceremonies, flourished. The country also opened up to the rest of the world with the Europeans' arrival—for a time.