JAMES MURDOCH' HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINS

TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 AD

 

CHAPTER XIX.

THE GREAT SUCCESSION WARS. (1337-1392.)

 

AT the date of Daigo II’s escape to Yoshino the Empire was in a state of comparative tranquillity. Nitta Yoshisada was still holding out for the deposed sovereign in the castle of Kanzaki on Tsuruga Bay. and Kitabatake Akiiye was making strong headway in Mutsu. Elsewhere, however, organised resistance to the Ashikaga cause, except in the mountainous peninsula between the head of the Inland Sea and the Bay of Owari, had ceased to be formidable. But Daigo II’s flight from Kyoto changed the aspect of affairs completely. Within a hundred days of that event civil war was raging furiously in almost every corner of the Empire.

The Southern Court lost no time in appointing its own local officials and in dispatching emissaries commissioned to raise troops and punish the “rebels” in every direction. As has been said Daigo II had many sons, and the services of all these were now utilised to the full. They were individually committed to the charge of able soldiers, and sent out as nominal commanders to Kyushu, to Shikoku, to the Hokurikudo, to Totomi, to Mutsu, and elsewhere, to stimulate loyal subjects to rally to their father’s cause. The first event of any consequence in this fifty-six years’ strife was the fall of Kanzaki keep in April 1338, when one of Nitta’s sons and one of the Imperial Princes committed suicide, while the other was taken prisoner. Nitta himself contrived to make good his escape over the mountain passes into Central Echizen, whither he was presently followed by Shiba Takatsune, who had reduced Kanzaki; and for the next fifteen months the province was the scene of various encounters between these two leaders. The fall of Nitta in a skirmish in September 1338 practically decided the issue in Echizen for the time being, his brother Wakiya Yoshisuke abandoning the contest there and retiring to the South in the following year, after some abortive operations against Takatsune.

Meanwhile the Southern Court had sustained a more serious loss in the person of the brilliant young Kitabatake Akiiye, the Governor of Mutsu. By the end of 1337 he had not only beaten down all opposition in his own province, but was in a position to undertake operations beyond its limits. His first exploit was the capture of Kamakura (January 1338) and the reduction of some of the surrounding provinces. His slay in Kamakura was of the briefest; in the following month he was en route for Yoshino at the head of a strong army. The prime object of the Southern Court at this time was the capture of Kyoto, and it had endeavoured to bring up troops from every quarter of the Empire to effect this purpose. But everywhere the country was so evenly divided in sentiment that the local partisans of the South found more than ample employment in their own districts, and the Mutsu army was the only considerable force from the provinces that appeared. It routed the Ashikaga commanders at Awa-no-hara in Mino, at Yawata, and at Nara, while the appearance of Kitabatake Akiiye’s younger brother Akinobu on Otoko-yama threw Kyoto into a panic. This latter force was dislodged, however, while the situation was relieved by the victory of that capable leader Ko Moronao at Abeno, in Settsu, over Kitabatake Akiiye, who fell in the action at the age of twenty-one. Two months later (August 1338) Daigo II died; and under his son and successor Murakami II, a boy of twelve, the struggle in the Home Provinces languished for a decade or so. It was hopeless for the Southerners to attempt to capture Kyoto unless strongly reinforced from the outlying circuits; and until the Ashikaga partisans in some one or other or several of these circuits were reduced, no reinforcements could be looked for.

In these outlying circuits it is small wonder to find that all was turmoil and confusion. Which was the legitimate sovereign was a question on which the Court nobles themselves were pretty evenly divided, for we find from a glance at the Kugyo Bunin that at no time had the Senior line with its seat in Kyoto the least difficulty in filling its ministerial and other important posts with high-born Fujiwaras. Such being the case among the Court nobles themselves, it is not strange that the military men in the provinces should have been perplexed by the problem. As a rule they adopted that view of the situation which was most in accordance with their own immediate material interests.

The accompanying map, which is such as appears in most Japanese historical atlases, will convey a rough general idea of the situation. Only it is to be noted that in several circuits the situation was constantly changing; and what is more important still—many extensive tracts which are coloured North or South exclusively, were by no manner of means undivided in their allegiance. Take the case of the three southern, provinces of Kyushu in the years following the flight to Yoshino. In the map, Satsuma is represented as being held by Shimadzu for the Northern Court. But in the very district in which Shimadzu had his headquarters, Aso, the Shugo of the Southern Court also had his! Of the thirteen cantons into which the province was then divided, Shimadzu’s authority was absolute and undivided in no more than one. Aso’s partisans were supreme in as many as three; while the gentry in the remaining nine were pretty equally distributed between the opposing camps. Shimadzu was Shugo of Osumi also; but the greater part of Osumi was held by Kimotsuki (the hereditary foe of the Shimadzu), a partisan of the Southern Court. In Hyuga the situation was, if possible, still more complicated. Here the Northerners had a Shugo (Hatakeyama) and the control of two out of five districts, one of these being held by the Ito family. But this house of Ito was divided, and one branch of it strongly supported the Southern Court in Miya­zaki district. South of this, Morokata district was hotly contested, not by two, but by three parties, for while Kimotsuki opposed the Shugo, a remnant of the Hojo party made head for itself not unsuccessfully. Later on, this Hojo chieftain. Nagoshi, espoused the Southern cause,—as did Tokiyuki, the surviving head of the house. But many of the Hojo faction fought for the Northerners, even against their own neighbouring kith and kin.

This state of affairs was by no means confined to the south of the Empire; it was general. What really was going on was a whole series of private wars,—the combatants acting professedly in the name of one or other of the rival Emperors to legalise their aggressions upon their neighbours, and passing from one side to the other in a fashion utterly bewildering to the historian. In short, these six-and-forty years might not inaptly be characterised as the Great Age of Turncoats, for the great houses that remained constant to the fortunes of the Southern Dynasty from first to last might almost be counted upon the fingers of one hand. In this respect, the Nittas and their related septs, the Kitabatakes and the Kikuchis, have an unblemished and unimpeachable record. That of the Kusunoki’s is marred by the twelve years’ defection of Masanori (1368-1381); although the Wada branch of the family remained unshaken in its allegiance at that time. On the Northern or Ashikaga side the record is not a whit more satisfactory. Disappointed hopes in the matter of promotion and rewards for services rendered, jealousy of fellow-commanders, quarrels with fellow-officers, and numerous causes of a less serious and even of a trivial nature over and over again drove Northern partisans into the Southern camp,—sometimes, however, for a very brief space of time! There were undoubtedly some men who fought stoutly and disinterestedly on behalf of what they honestly believed the legitimate cause, on both sides; but they were certainly in a minority. Many military septs fought merely to extend their domains; others wished nothing better than to be left in peaceable enjoyment of the lands they held. But in most provinces they were harried by the recruiting agents and tax-collectors of both Courts,—and passive neutrality was out of the question. Espousing one or other side was imperative; and should this turn out to be the losing one, it meant the confiscation of the domains of the sept Accordingly, to safeguard themselves against any such contingency many families like the Itos in Hyuga, and the Utsunomiya in Shimotsuke, arranged that different branches of the house should declare for opposing causes and carry on a friendly family warfare of their own. One party would erect a fort or a stockade in a strategic position and provision themselves to maintain it; the other would raise a similar structure in the immediate neighbourhood. In the encounters between the two garrisons sword-wounds were exceedingly rare, although there were occasional “accidents” in the exchange of arrows. The party whose provisions first gave out would retire. Thus when the recruiting agents appeared, the opposing chiefs could urge that they were too closely pressed at home to be able to spare any men for distant expeditions; while in the case of an ultimate decisive triumph of either the Southern Court or the Ashikaga cause, the confiscated lands of the vanquished faction of the sept would pass not to a stranger but to friends and relatives.

In most of the provinces each Court had its own Shugo or Governor, or other official representative, and the lieges were constantly worried by antagonistic edicts from the Southern Court and the Northern Court, and instructions from the Shogun, the delegate of the latter. From this two natural results followed. In the first place, respect for central authority went on waning, and threatened to disappear, and in the next every sept strong enough to do so endeavoured to establish an imperium in imperio on its own behalf. Great houses, like that of Kikuchi in Higo, now began to regulate their affairs by a machinery similar to that which the great Kugé families had employed in their halcyon days of prosperity. Four or five of the leading members or vassals formed a standing council, which decided not only all important internal questions, such as succession to the chieftainship, and the guardianship of the chief if a minor, but the general internal policy of the fief as a whole. Most matters that would have been referred to the Bakufu in Kamakura days, were now settled at the Daimyo’s own council-board. As has been repeatedly asserted, fiefs in Yoritomo’s time were generally small in extent; now they began to assume considerably wider dimensions. Weaker septs in the neighbourhood, while not abandoning their position of direct vassalage to the Shogun, found it advantageous to “commend” themselves to their more powerful neighbours, so far at least as to have their external policy dictated for them by the neighbouring great Daimyo’s council-board, at which the heads of the most influential among them now and then found a seat. This was an important step in the development of the feudal system in Japan. Another was the abolition of female fiefs, and the succession of women to real estate, and a curtailment of the inheritances not so much of younger sons as of all sons except the one selected as lord of the clan.

In Yoritomo’s time the Shugo was not a hereditary office; in fact, the Azuma Kagami shows that the Shugo were then shifted about in most cases with greater frequency than the Provincial Governors appointed by Kyoto were. But under the Hojo, in some cases, the office did practically become hereditary in some families; notably in the case of the three Kyushu Shugo—Otomo, Shimadzu, and Shoni. Now at this time few if any of the former Kamakura Shugo rallied to the Southern standard; they nearly all espoused the Ashikaga cause, while many of the old-established non-official military families in their jurisdiction took the Southern side, actuated by jealousy of the Shugo as much as by any other feeling perhaps. Thus in their own interests it became the policy of the Ashikagas to strengthen the hands of the Shugo as much as they could, and under them the office did become virtually hereditary in most cases. And not only that, but a single Shugo was occasionally entrusted with the administration not merely of one, but of several provinces. Now it must never for a moment be forgotten that at this time a Shugo’s position was twofold. In the first place he was like other chiefs in his province, a territorial magnate with broad acres and numerous vassals of his own. This was in his own right. But in addition to that he was the Shogun's salaried officer, paid from taxes levied in the province. Now these Shugo in their capacity of territorial magnates began. like their neighbours, to organise councils for the conduct of the affairs of the family and for the settlement of the general external policy of the clan; while, qua great Daimyo, they forced their weaker neighbours to commend themselves to them. It is not strange then to find that the most powerful of the Japanese “Kings” of whom the early missionaries speak in their letters were descendants of Ashikaga Shugo, whose double position had given them a great advantage over their fellow land-owners in the struggle for territorial aggrandisement and independent authority which accompanied the total breakdown of all central authority—whether Imperial or Shogunal—in the Empire. Some of the great feudal houses of sixteenth-century Japan had been founded by Provincial Governors, it is true. But such houses were few and far between,—Kitabatake in Ise and Anenokoji in Hida being the most considerable, for by 1542 the fortunes of the erstwhile great family of Kikuchi in Higo had fallen on evil days. Of old the Provincial Governor had been a civil office purely and simply; but these Kitabatakes and Kikuchis had all been among the finest and most determined fighting men in Japan.

As indicated in the accompanying map, the Southerners held the provinces of Idzumi, Kawachi, Yamato, Iga, Ise, and Shima, the greater portion of Kishu to the south, and a small portion of Omi to the north. Of course, the position of the frontier line fluctuated considerably from time to time; but on several occasions at various points it was within less than twenty miles of Kyoto. Within it were the great temples of Nara and Koyasan, and the great Shinto sanctuary of Ise. The province of Settsu through which ran the maritime communication with Kyoto was for most of the time in the hands of the Northerners. But it was the great cock-pit of the war; the neighbourhood of what is now the city of Osaka being the scene of scores of bloody encounters. Settsu afforded the best base for operating against the Southern domains; and on the other hand the possession of it was a factor of prime importance in the great problem of provisioning a city of many hundred thousand inhabitants, as Kyoto then was. On many occasions Southern successes in the open country reduced the Northern capital to a state of temporary starvation and drove commo­dities up to famine prices.

Baulked in their endeavours to seize the harbours of Settsu and hold them permanently, the Southerners established a new naval base of their own. This was at the picturesque haven of Shingu on the east coast of Kishu, where a little village at the head of the inlet soon assumed the aspect of a populous and bustling mart. Here squadrons were fitted out to maintain communication with Shikoku and to dominate the Inland Sea, and above all to carry troops to and from Southern Kyushu, where the Southerners from the first contrived to hold their own, and presently began to wear down opposition and to carry their victorious arms into the centre and ultimately the north of the island. On the east they had established themselves in Totomi, but their hold on that province was brief. In the Kwanto, Kamakura had been promptly recovered by the Ashikaga officers; and in several parts of the Eight Provinces the Southern cause had its local supporters. To reinforce these a strong expedition was dispatched from Shingu harbour; but it met with premature disaster in a typhoon, and of the leaders (old) Kitabatake Chikufusa was the only one who succeeded in reaching Yedo Bay. Landing there, he established himself in the keep of Oda in Hitachi, and for the next four or five years he gave the Ashikaga officers so much to do in the Kwanto, that they could spare but few troops for service in the West. At last things turned against Kitabatake, who was cooped up in Seki Castle. He managed to escape from it just before its fall in 1343, and, making his way to the Southern Court, reassumed the general direction of affairs, continuing to hold it down to the time of his death in 1354. While in the Kwanto, he had found time to compose the two works which were destined to make him a very considerable political force in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Japan. The first of these works, the Shokugensho, or “Brief Account of the Origin of Offices,” was actually used as a text-book in Japanese schools until very recent times. But it is his Jintoshotoki (“History of the True Succession of the Divine Monarchs ”) that is Kitabatake’s principal work.

Inasmuch as this pamphlet was evidently intended as a counterblast to the Ashikaga Kemmu Shikimoku, it is advisable, before dealing with it, to turn our attention to what Takauji and his party had meanwhile been doing. Although it was not until 1338 that Ashikaga Takauji received his patent of investiture as Shogun from the Northern Court, he had been virtually acting as Shogun ever since his recapture of Kamakura in the autumn of 1335. One aim of his was to follow the precedents of Yoritomo in all things as far as possible; and so it was his original intention to make Kamakura the seat of his authority. But the political situation imperiously demanded his presence in Kyoto. Accordingly he installed his son Yoshiakira, then eight years of age (of course, under the guardianship of a Shitsuji Minister) as Kwanto-Kwanryo, and re-established the old Kamakura administrative machinery with certain necessary or advisable modifications. He himself established the Bakufu at Muromachi in Kyoto, which thus became the seat of the Shogunal power, and remained so for more than two centuries. The Muromachi Bakufu at first was an almost exact replica of that of the thirteenth-century Kamakura. The chief difference arose from the fact that as Takauji was Shogun not merely in name but in reality, there was no place for a Regent; and so instead of a Shikken and one Shitsuji, two Shitsuji (Ministers) were placed at the head of affairs in Kyoto, acting of course under Takauji’s order. The first two Shitsuji were Ko Moronao and Uyesugi Tomosada, the latter a relative of Takauji by marriage, Tomosada’s cousin, Noriaki, being about the same time appointed Shitsuji for Kamakura. Takauji’s brother. Tadayoshi, was made Chief of the General Staff, while several Kamakura literati,—descendants of Oe, Nakahara, Miyoshi, and others—were brought up to fill positions on the various Boards, the services of some of the ablest priests of the time being also enlisted in the work of drafting laws and regulations and in similar duties. One of their earliest tasks had been the compilation of the Kemmu-Shikimoku (Code of Kemmu), which was drawn up and published not long after the battle of the Minato-gawa and while Daigo II was invested in Hi-ei-zan.

However, even in the very limited sense in which the Joei-Shikimoku might be called a Code, a Code the Kemmu Shikimoku emphatically is not, for in the whole of its seventeen articles there is scarcely a single specific legal provision in the strict sense of the term. Economy must be universally practised; Drinking parties and wanton frolics must be suppressed; Crimes of violence and outrage must be quelled; The practice of entering the private dwellings of the people and making inquisitions into their affairs must be given up,—such are its first four injunctions, while Articles 5 and 6 merely deal with the ownership of vacant plots and the re­building of houses and fire-proof “godowns” in the devastated sections of the capital. The following paragraphs provide that (7) Men of special ability for government work should be chosen for the office of Shugo; (8) A stop must be put to the practice of influential nobles and women of all sorts and Buddhist ecclesiastics making their interested recommendations (to the Sovereign); (9) Persons holding public posts must be liable to reprimand for negligence and idleness; (10) Bribery must be firmly put down; (11) Presents made from all quarters to those attached to the Palace whether of the Inside or Outside services must be sent back; and (12) Those who are to be in personal attendance on the rulers must be selected for that duty. Ceremonial etiquette to be the predominant principle; Men noted for probity and adherence to high principle to be rewarded by more than ordinary distinction; The petitions and complaints of the poor and lowly to be heard and redress granted; The petitions of Temples and Shrines to be dealt with on their merits; Certain fixed days to be appointed for the rendering of decisions and the issue of government orders,—these complete the provisions of this so-called “Feudal Code.”

All this is so simple and harmless that the idea of the necessity of any counterblast to such a document might well appear to be ludicrous. But the articles as a whole had a preamble and a conclusion, and each of them was accompanied by a brief and pithy commentary. There the tone of thought was mainly Chinese; and the Chinese virtue theory (to which reference has been made in an early chapter) with its logical consequences was by implication admitted by the writer. Now, any admission of the logical consequences of this Chinese virtue theory might be disastrous to the pure native Japanese theory of the Sovereign ruling indefeasibly by virtue of Divine descent from the Sun-Goddess.

In view of this, passages like the following in Kitabatake’s chief work become highly significant: “Great Yamato is a divine country. It is only our land whose foundations were first laid by the divine ancestor. It alone has been transmitted by the Sun-Goddess to a long line of her descendants. There is nothing of this kind in foreign countries. Therefore it is called the divihe land... It is only our country, which from the time when the heaven and earth were first unfolded has preserved the succession to the throne intact in one single family. Even when, as sometimes naturally happened, it descended to a lateral branch, it was held according to just principles. This shows that the oath of the gods (to preserve the succession) is ever renewed in a way which distinguishes Japan from all other countries. ... It is the duty of every man born on the Imperial soil to yield devoted loyalty to his Sovereign, even to the sacrifice of his own life. Let no one suppose for a moment that there is any credit due to him for doing so. Nevertheless in order to stimulate the zeal of those who come after, and in loving memory of the dead, it is the business of the ruler to grant rewards in such cases (to the children). Those who are in an inferior position should not enter into rivalry with them. Still more should those who have done no specially meritorious service abstain from inordinate ambitions... I have already touched on the principles of statesmanship. They are based on justice and mercy, in the dispensing of which firm action is requisite. Such is the clear instruction vouchsafed to us by Tenshodaijin (the Sun Goddess) ”

Of course it is true that the prime object of Kitabatake’s pamphlet was not so much to counter the doctrine of the Kemmu-Shikimoku as to prove the legitimacy of the Southern line whose cause he had so devotedly espoused. But the fact remains that the influence of the Jintoshotoki upon the practical politics of the age was insignificant. Not that there was no reading public in those times; for among the Kuge for some generations there had been a great revival, not of productive literary activity,—except perhaps in Japanese “poetry,”—but of scholarship, while the Court of the Imperial Shoguns in Kamakura had made learning fashionable in the Kwanto. Great military chiefs now often kept a priest attached to them, not merely as ghostly counsellor, but as tutor and instructor in the lore of China. A list of some thirty or forty names of captains and chieftains enjoying a considerable reputation for scholarship could easily be compiled. But Kitabatake’s arguments were not of the kind that appealed most strongly to them; for the chief convincing argument at this time was,—self-interest. Otherwise how can we explain the astounding and bewildering frequency and seeming levity with which sides were changed by many, if not by most, during the course of this long and dreary civil wart was not till 1649 that the Jintdshdtdki was printed. Then indeed it began to exercise a great and steadily growing influence upon the political thought of the nation. The compilers of the Dai Nihon Shi, the great standard History of Japan, were pro­foundly affected by it, as were also Motoori and the other leaders in the Revival of Shinto movement in the following century. And the book was in the hands of many of the “ patriots,” whose watchwords were “ Reverence the Emperor: Expel the Barbarians” in the troublous times following the appearance of Perry’s squadron of “Black Ships” in Yedo Bay.

On his return to Yoshino Kitabatake set vigorously to work to organise an efficient administration and to prepare for a decisive movement on Kyoto. In this he was ably seconded by the Court noble Shijo Takasuke, who might not so very inaptly be characterised as the Carnot of the Southern Court. By the middle of 1347—(plague was then raging in Kyoto, by the way)—the Southerners were again in a position to assume the offensive. The commander was Masatsura, son of Kusunoki Masashige, who had lately assumed the chieftainship of the clan. Down to February 1348 his record was one of unbroken triumph; he not only threatened to master the estuary of the Yodo River, and so cut Kyoto off from all communication with the sea, but from his base at Tojo he seriously menaced the capital, where his emissaries or partisans were raising great conflagrations night after night. The unhappy city was thus at once the victim of plague, fire, and famine. This compelled the Ashikaga to make a great effort; and a force of 60,000 men was mustered, and thrown against the Southerners in two columns. While one marched to relieve the situation in Settsu, the other, under Ko Moronao, advanced upon Masatsura’s base at Tojo. This latter army was far stronger than Masatsura’s; and in the great battle of Shijo-nawate in Kawachi that gallant and able young officer met with his first disaster. It was also his last, for he fell while leading a desperate charge. His army was completely routed, and many of his troops surrendered to the Northerners. These now pressed forward into Yamato, burning and plundering right and left. Yoshino with its palace was captured and fired; while many of the oldest and richest fanes in the province went up in flames. This brought the priestly mercenaries with their Sacred Tree and other similar paraphernalia into the field,—and the onward swoop of the victors received a temporary check. Then just at this point Ko Moronao to the surprise of all suddenly wheeled round and returned to Kvoto (February 1348).

The Southerners very soon rallied, and bringing up fresh levies from Kumano promptly repelled the invasion from Settsu, and drove back the Northerners to the neighbourhood of what is now the city of Osaka. Here the Bakufu commander, Ko Moroyasu (Moronao’s brother), could do little more than cling on to the line of the Yodo. Meanwhile the great storm which had long been brewing in the Ashikaga camp was on the point of bursting. As has been said, Ko Moronao had been made Shitsuji in Kyoto, his brother Morofuyu Shitsuji in Kamakura, while another brother Moroyasu held high military command. Ko Moronao, by tar the ablest of the trio, had undoubtedly great talents both as an administrator and as a commander; and Takauji, fully appreciating the fact, gradually came to entrust him with difficult commissions outside the sphere of his proper duties. This gave offence to many, and especially to Moronao’s fellow-officer Uyesugi Shigeyoshi, and to Ashikaga Tadayoshi. From all accounts it appears that Moronao’s demeanour was the reverse of conciliatory; although he aspired to play the part of a Hojo Shikken, his character was in many respects the very reverse of that of Yasutoki or Tokiyori. Tn his great mansion in Kyoto he kept almost regal state; in fact his extravagance and his haughtiness were equally marked. Time and again several of the Daimyo had endeavoured to bring about his fall; but all their efforts had hitherto miscarried. Just at the time he suddenly wheeled round upon Kyoto in February 1348, there was a formidable intrigue afoot against him, for in it both Tadayoshi and Uyesugi Shigeyoshi were involved. Takauji had left a bastard son behind him in Kamakura as a priest; and this son now came up to Kyoto. His father re­fused to meet him; and thereupon Tadayoshi received the youth in his mansion, and ultimately adopted him. Tadafuyu, as he was henceforth called, turned out to be a singularly able man, and the conspirators, determined to make him a counterpoise to Moronao, obtained a commission for him as Tandai of the West of the Main Island, which would place a vast military force at his disposal. Meanwhile Moronao had been able to gather all the threads of the plot into his hand; and he was strong enough to procure the banishment of Uyesugi to Echigo, where he was presently assassinated, and the revocation of Tadafuyu’s commission, while Tadayoshi was compelled to shave his head and retire from public life. All this intensified the profound dissatisfaction of the many military chiefs hostile to Moronao.

Tadafuyu promptly crossed the straits into Kyushu, where the situation was very peculiar. The Southerners had not indeed conquered the whole of Satsuma and Osumi, but they had so far gained the upper hand there that they could entrust the local gentry with the task of reducing Shimadzu, and remove their headquarters into Higo. Here the balance of power was held by the house of Aso. It had espoused the Southern cause from the first; but the chieftain of one of its two branches had, as he considered, not been adequately rewarded for the distinguished services he had rendered; and instead of fighting he was now negotiating the best terms he could with both parties. If action be the real criterion of belief, this Aso had not the slightest faith in the Kitabatake’s theory of the duty of sacrificing life itself for the Sovereign without hope or expectation of reward, for in his demands he was worse than a Dugald Dalgetty,—in short he seems to have been a veritable son of a horse-leech. However Prince Yasunaga, the Imperial Commander-in-Chief, had been able to satisfy him for the time being; and the Southerners were presently able to begin operations in Chikugo. Here in the north of the island, Isshiki, the Ashikaga Tandai had been in command for some years; and among others he had contrived to offend the Shugo, Shoni. Now on Tadafuyu’s appearance in Kyushu, Shoni and a great mass of the local gentry attached themselves to him. Thereupon a deadly intestine struggle broke out in the Ashikaga camp; and the island was presently contested, not by two, but by three parties. Shortly afterwards Takauji started from Kyoto to settle things in Kyushu. Then all of a sudden Tadayoshi disappeared from the capital, and no one knew where he had gone, till certain intelligence arrived that he was at the head of a rapidly increasing force in Kawachi and about to march on Kyoto. After making futile overtures to the Southern Court Tadayoshi braced himself for a decisive struggle with the Ko family. Desperate fighting in and around Kyoto ensued, as the result of which the Kos had to retire to Harima to form a junction with Takauji, who had thus to abandon his southern expedition. Again Tadayoshi’s party triumphed; and peace was patched up at Hyogo, it being arranged that the Kos should resign their offices and enter the priesthood. On their way up to the capital they were waylaid near Nishinomiya by a squadron of Uyesugi Akiyoshi’s horse, sent to avenge the murder of his father, and Moronao and Moroyasu and some half-dozen of their kinsmen were made away with. A little later Ko Morofuyu, the Kama­kura Shitsuji, met his doom.

Some time before starting on his southern expedition, Takauji had brought his eldest son, Yoshiakira, up from Kamakura to take Tadayoshi’s place in Kyoto, and had send his fourth son Mochiuji (ten years of age) down to Kamakura as Kwanto Kwanryo, with Uyesugi Noriaki and Ko Morofuyu as his Shitsuji. As Uyesugi had gone over to Tadayoshi, and Morofuyu had been killed, Takauji’s position in Kamakura was the reverse of secure.

Although Takauji and Tadayoshi had been nominally reconciled, their distrust of each other was so great that Tadayoshi presently deemed it advisable to retire from Kyoto to Tsuruga. His military following was very strong, and his appearance in the neighbourhood of Kyoto caused much anxiety in the city. In the meantime Takauji had secretly entered into communication with the Southern Court, and many of his followers were intensely chagrined to learn that he had actually made his peace with Murakami II and arranged for the abdication of the Northern Emperor, Suko. Thereupon several of the most influential captains followed Tadayoshi in his flight to Kamakura.

Now for the second time Takauji found himself confronted with the task of recovering Kamakura. It proved to be easier than he expected, for after a great battle near Okitsu, in which, as in the battle of Hakone, the defection of the opposing vanguard at the beginning of the action practically decided the day, Takauji’s march was unopposed. When he reached Kamakura he found that his brother was no more; the general belief of the time was that Tadayoshi had taken poison to save himself from falling into the hands of the victor.

On this occasion Takauji stayed two years (1352-1353) in the Kwanto; and during this time the alarums and excursions in Northern and Eastern Japan were continuous and incessant. What the exact causes of many of them were is a good deal more than I can say; a good deal more perhaps than any one will ever be able to say. But in the midst of the weltering confusion a few facts are plain. One is that Takauji was again assailed by his old foes the Nittas, who actually captured and held Kamakura for a brief space in 1352; and another is that Takauji’s adherence to the Southern cause was of very brief duration, for in a few months we again find him using the Northern calendar. In the Kwanto alone during these two years more battles were fought,—some of them of considerable magnitude—than during the thirty years between 1455 and 1485 in England!

Meanwhile envoys from the Southern Court had appeared in Kyoto and received the sacred emblems (that is, the fabricated set) from Suko Tenno; and later on Kusunoki Masanori and Kitabatake Akiyoshi’s troops occupied Kyoto for about two months. Takauji’s son, Yoshiakira, retired into Omi, there to await the course of events. He soon either became dissatisfied with the situation, or his hand was forced by his followers whose fortunes had suffered, or seemed likely to suffer, by his father’s surrender. Strong masses of Ashikaga partisans presently assembled round the north of the capital and the mountain slopes became ruddy with their camp fires at night. On the plea that the terms of the convention were being violated they at last burst upon the city, and swept the Southerners out of it. In the meantime all the three ex-Emperors of the Northern line had been conveyed to Kanafu, far within the Southern lines, and the attempts made to enable them to effect their escape miscarried. Yoshiakira was thus reduced to the expedient of setting up an Emperor who could neither receive the succession from a predecessor nor be invested with the sacred emblems; and for these reasons Kogon II (1352-1371), Suko’s younger brother, was in a very doubtful and exceptional position. A proposal was made that his mother should conduct the administration as ex-Empress—(Kogon II was only fifteen)—but this was rejected as something unheard of. A compromise was arrived at; the young Sovereign’s mother being entrusted with the administration of the Chokodo domains, from which the ex-Emperors still derived their revenues.

The fighting around and to the south of Kyoto on this occasion had been fierce and desperate, and in some of the actions Yamana Tokiuji, the Shugo of Hoki and Inaba, had especially distinguished himself. The Yamanas, it should be explained, were Minamotos, a senior branch of the same stock as the Ashikagas. Tokiuji now claimed as a reward that his son should be invested with some lands in Wakasa he had been promised by Takauji. The request was refused; and thereupon the Yamanas in high dudgeon returned to their provinces, entered into pourparlers with the Southern Court and raised troops for an assault upon Kyoto. About the same time, Tadafuyu’s position in Kyushu and the West of the Main Island had become precarious; and soon after he made up his mind to throw in his lot with the Southerners, by whom he was at once made Sotsuibushi, or Commander-in-Chief. In July 1353 the capital was captured, and Yoshiakira carried off the Emperor (Kogon II) first to Hi-ei-zan and then to Mino, while all the Court nobles who had assisted at Kogon II’s coronation or taken office under him were degraded and otherwise punished. However the failure of the Southern Court to provide the Yamana troops with the promised supplies disgusted their leaders, who soon withdrew to their own country. In the meantime the Ashikagas had been mustering men; and they presently were strong enough to re-occupy the capital and make preparations for carrying the war into the enemy’s territory again. Then, early in 1355, the Ashikagas were again hunted from the capital for another two months; and then again another series of furious engagements to the south of the city followed upon their return. And so the weary, weary struggle went on.

Just about this time the Southern cause sustained a serious loss in the death of Shijo Takasuke, who fell in action in 1352, and old Kitabatake, who died in 1354. It was mainly owing to the personal ascendancy of the latter that the Southern Court had been kept united and free from faction. Not long after his decease, faction did begin to make its appearance, and the Southern Court presently ceased to be the formidable power it had been in his days. Since the fall of Nitta Yoshisada in 1338, it was really between Kitabatake Chikafusa and Ashikaga Takauji that the struggle had lain.

Takauji himself died some four years later on, in June 1358. His memory has been blackened and blasted by ultra­loyalist historians, and for two centuries it has been the target of obloquy and perfervid patriotic invective. Lately in certain quarters a reaction has set in, and he has actually been characterised as “one of Japan’s greatest and noblest men.” I greatly regret that I cannot bring myself to participate in any such estimate of him. That he had many fine personal qualities is indeed perfectly true; brave in the field of battle, patient and tenacious in the face of disaster; generous, liberal, not vindictive, and highly accomplished as accomplishments then went. But all that is far from making him a great man. Just weigh him in the same balance with Yoritomo. When Takauji began his political career he was in command of a strong and well-equipped army which made him the virtual master of the situation; at his death a quarter of a century later on, the flames of civil war were raging furiously in almost every corner of the Empire, the fuel being in a large measure supplied by vassals of his own—such as the Yamana and the Momonoi—whom he lacked the capacity to control. And these twenty-five years from first to last had been years of fierce and fell internecine strife, of factions, of desertions, and in many parts of Japan of absolutely chaotic confusion. Yoritomo entered upon bis struggle with the Taira at the head of a band of no more than 300 desperate men; and yet in less than ten years his control over the military class from Mutsu to Satsuma was complete, absolute, and unquestioned; and the peace and order that reigned within the “four seas’’ was such as Japan rarely knew. Then the new Shogunate, that wonderful administrative engine the Kamakura Bakufu, the new military capital of Kamakura itself, are eloquent testimony to Yoritomo's originality. On the other hand what did Takauji originate? Absolutely nothing,—except perhaps a new line of Shoguns, who, with one or two exceptions perhaps, were remarkable for nothing so much as for lack of fibre and gross incapacity. To the all important matter of the administration of law and justice, Yoritomo paid the closest personal attention; either to tins or to the working of his administrative machinery in general Takauji paid scarcely any personal attention at all. Much—far too much—was entrusted to the Ko family, especially to Moronao, whose name became synonymous with all that was haughty and all that was arbitrary. Under Yoritomo the Kos would unquestionably have been kept in their proper places and restrained from all misuse or abuse of their undoubted abilities. Under Yoritomo the laws were strictly enforced; in Kyoto almost from the very first the very excellent though commonplace provisions of the Kemmu Shikimoku were merely so much dead­letter. Take the first article of that “Code” which enjoins the universal practise of economy for example. “Under the designation of ‘smart’ there prevails,”—so runs the commentary to it—“a love of eccentricity or originality, figured brocades and embroidered silks, of elaborately mounted swords, and a hunting after fashions, and of everything calculated to strike the eye. The age may almost be said to have become demented. Those who are rich become more and more filled with pride; and the less wealthy are ashamed of not being able to keep up with them. Nothing could be more injurious to the cause of good manners. This must be strictly kept within bounds.” Now, by the very man chiefly responsible for the enforcement of this regulation, Ko Moronao, the article was wantonly flouted in the most open and ostentatious manner. In the pomp and luxury of his own establishment he was the Cardinal Wolsey of the age. Nor was Takauji himself much better in this respect. The tone of his household was that of the most extravagant of the greatest Court nobles; the state he maintained was almost imperial. The death of an Ashikaga female infant sufficed to bring all public business to a temporary stand-still. Simplicity and economy! About their traditions the Ashikaga line of Shoguns knew nothing. We hear of Yoritomo drawing his sword and cutting off the too ample skirts of a certain Vice-Governor of Chikuzen who had appeared in a costume which contravened a Kamakura sumptuary regulation. For Takauji or any of his line to have administered any such an object-lesson to a vassal would have been a glaring case of Satan reproving sin. And until Hosokawa Yoriyuki’s time (1368-1379) most of the injunctions of the Kemmu Shikimoku were regarded as being more honoured in the breach than in the observance. Possessed of no great measure of originality, Takauji can hardly be described as great, whether as an organiser, an administrator, or as a law-giver. Nor was either he or his brother Tadayoshi a great captain in the sense that Yoshitsune was. The best achievement of the two brothers was perhaps the campaign which led up to the battle of the Minatogawa in 1336. But there the opposing Commander-in-Chief, Nitta Yoshisada, was anything but a genius in strategy: if Kusunoki Masashige had been in his place, that campaign might have ended very differently. Takauji may indeed have been the greatest man of his time; but that is not saying very much, for the middle of the fourteenth century in Japan was the golden age not merely of turncoats, but of mediocrities.

The troublous decade (1358-1368) of the second Ashikaga Shogun’s rule may be briefly dismissed. Yoshiakira’s want of resolution and his readiness to be ruled by the advice of the counsellor who held his ear for the moment involved him in frequent troubles with his great vassals, several of whom revolted and went over to the Southerners. In 1362 one of these, Hosokawa Kiyouji, disappointed in his expectations of reward, drove the Shogun from the capital, and then returned to his native province of Awa intending to reduce Shikoku on behalf of the South. Kiyouji however was soon overpowered by his cousin, the famous Yoriyuki. In this same year of 1362 the redoubtable Yamanas, who had meanwhile over-run the five provinces of Mimasaka, Bitchu, Bizen, Inaba, and Tamba, abandoned the Southern cause, and after a ten years’ defection made their peace with Yoshiakira. An evidence of the straits in which they had placed him is to be seen in the fact that the administration of these five provinces was now entrusted to the elder Yamana. Certain foreign writers speak of these provinces being given to him in fief. This is nonsense; be was merely made Shugo, as which of course he was entitled to retain a certain proportion of the taxes as official revenue. Then followed troubles with the Shibas and certain other great vassals. In 1366 and 1367 Yoshiakira endeavoured to arrange terms of accommodation between the rival Courts and to reunite Japan under a single Sovereign, but the negotiations ended in smoke.

The one satisfactory section of the Empire at this time was the Kwanto, where Takauji’s fourth son Motouji held the office of Kwanryo. In 1358 his officers settled matters effectually with that disturbing factor the Nittas, by seizing their chief, Yoshioki, and drowning him in the Tamagawa; and henceforth Motouji was truly master of the eight Eastern Provinces. His vassals then strongly urged him to march to Kyoto and dispossess Yoshiakira of the Shogunate, who wub known to be jealous of him. But Motouji stoutly refused to do so, and sent a strong force under his Shitsuji, Hatakeyama Kunikiyo, to aid Yoshiakira in his campaign against Yoshino. A series of considerable victories followed; but Hatakeyama’s conduct brought him into collision with his brother officers, and he abandoned the Ashikaga cause and tried to form a party of his own. On returning to the East he was attacked and vanquished by Motouji, who thereupon recalled his former Shitsuji Uyesugi Noriaki, who had been in exile since the death of Tadayoshi in 1352. At, or shortly after this time, Kai and Izu, and, later on, Mutsu, were put under Kamakura jurisdiction; and their peaceful and orderly condition formed a marked contrast to the general state of the rest of the Empire. On the whole this Motouji, who died at the early age of twenty-eight in 1367, was perhaps the best and ablest of the Ashikagas.

Meanwhile, except in Kyushu, whither, by the way, the remnants of the Nittas had betaken themselves in considerable force, the fortunes of the Southern cause were decidedly on the downward grade. Had Kitabatake Chikafusa survived ten or twelve years longer the probabilities are that the Ashikaga Shogunate would have fallen. But on Kitabatake’s death in 1354 there was no one capable of filling his place. Nor was this the worst of it. Where the three Northern ex-Emperors had been conveyed far within the Southern lines in 1352, they had been followed by a huge influx of Court nobles from Kyoto. Now these, instead of proving an element of additional strength, had turned out to be a great source of weakness and discord. The Emperor Murakami II had expressed an intention to abdicate; and immediately these worthies split into two hostile camps each supporting the claims of a different soil of his to the succession, and expended all their strength not in opposing the Northerners, but in internal squabbles. The Emperor did not abdicate; but the cabals went on notwithstanding; and when he died in 1368—the same year as Yoshiakira—the discord was really serious. This disgusted many of the military men and took all the heart for the cause out of them; and early in 1369 the chief of the hitherto loyal Kusunoki, Masanori, abandoned it as hopeless, and went over to the Northerners. Chokei had become Emperor and his brother Crown Prince; but even on the abdication of the former and the accession of the latter as Kameyama II in 1372, the faction in the Southern camp was by no means at an end. It was only the natural strength of the mountain fastness of the Kii peninsula that enabled the Southerners to maintain a precarious existence.

But in Kyushu, by 1371, they had triumphed unquestionably, and the Ashikaga had either been beaten to their knees or driven from the island. However with the appointment of the highly capable Imagawa Sadayo as Tandai things began to change there also; and although it took him more than a decade to re-establish the Ashikaga supremacy and to restore order in Kyushu, he at last succeeded in doing so.

On the death of Yoshiakira, in 1368, the Ashikaga administration had greatly gained in efficiency and vigour. This was indirectly the result of Motouji’s counsel, who discerning the great abilities and sterling character of Hosokawa Yoriyuki had advised Yoshiakira to entrust the fortunes of his ten-year-old son, Yoshimitsu, to his charge. Of Yoriyuki it suffices to say that he was fully the peer of the very best of the Hojos; and that in addition he was thoroughly devoted to the very best interests of the youthful Shogun. Yoshimitsu was most carefully brought up; everything was done to develop his intelligence, to build up his character, and to fit him for the proper discharge of the duties of the great office and illustrious position for which he was destined. And it is greatly to Yoshimitsu’s credit that he never forgot the immense debt of gratitude he owed to the guardian of his early years. Now under Yoriyuki, for the first time, the Kemmu Shikimoku ceased to be nothing more than empty phraseology, setting forth the pious aspirations of a few belated Puritans mocked by being called upon to legislate for a fourteenth-century Japanese Vanity Fair in arms. The spirit of its clauses was now strictly, sternly, and impartially enforced. Naturally enough this brought Yoriyuki into serious collision not only with individuals but with classes; especially with the priests, on some of whom his hand fell heavily. Truculent Shugo, incompetent officials, venal parasites, intriguing Court nobles and high-born dames were all presently loud in the expression of their grievances against him. At last in 1379 he set fire to his mansion in Kyoto and retired to his own acres in Shikoku in disgust.

Twelve years later, however, Yoriyuki’s services were again in request. A member of the Yamana family had reduced the provinces of Kishu and Idzumi in the Shogun’s name, but showed no inclination to surrender them to his suzerain. Meanwhile the Yamana power had been steadily growing in the West of the Main Island, and the family now had the administration of no fewer than eleven of the sixty-six provinces of the Empire. The Shogun, naturally enough, felt this to be a serious menace to his power; and now that Kyushu had been thoroughly reduced and pacified, and that the Southern Court was merely existing on sufferance, he recalled Yoriyuki and determined to curb the Yamanas. Just at this time the Yamana chief Mitsuyuki seized some domains belonging to the ex-Emperor in Idzumo, one of the provinces he not owned but administered. Thereupon Yoshimitsu mobilised a force to punish him; but on January 24, 1392, Mitsuyuki suddenly threw himself at the head of a vast force upon Kyoto. After desperate fighting he was repulsed; and in less than a month he was hopelessly overwhelmed and had to submit, and retire from the headship of the family, which was now stripped of the office of Shugo in nine provinces.

Shortly afterwards Hatakeyama Motokuni and Ouchi Yoshihiro captured the castle of Chihaya, and, although Kusunoki Masakatsu made good his escape, nearly all his followers surrendered. The situation of the Southern Court was now becoming desperate; and when Yoshimitsu opened up negotiations with it through Ouchi Yoshihiro, a definite settlement was presently arranged. The exact particulars cannot be definitely ascertained. What is certain is that a deputation of six Southern Court nobles appeared in Kyoto (1392), and handed over the sacred emblems to a commission of twenty-one Northern Kugé; that the Northern Emperor, Komatsu II, was then acknowledged sole and undisputed Sovereign of the Empire, and that Kameyama II became Dajo Tenno, and presently took up his residence at Saga near the capital. The (Southern) ex-Emperor was guaranteed in the possession of all his manors in Yoshino and elsewhere, while the Southern Kugé were also assigned estates for their support.

The chief doubtful point is whether it was stipulated that the Imperial succession should thenceforth be regulated by the provisions of Saga II’s will. The commonly accepted view is that it was so covenanted; and certain subsequent events lend support to this contention. The military men who had supported the Southern cause till the end did not make their appearance in the capital; they withdrew into various retreats to await the day when an Emperor of the Junior line should again be on the throne. If Saga II’s will was still authoritative that day should have come in 1412, when Komatsu II abdicated. But he was succeeded not by a Prince of the Southern line, but by his own son Shoko (1412-1428). This Sovereign was greatly addicted to the study and practice of magic arts, in which it was believed that proficiency could not be attained without the strict observance of continence, and he died without children. This contingency should have provided a fair opening for the Junior line, but Hanazono II (1428-1464) who was now raised to the throne was a grandson of the third Northern Emperor Suko. In 1413 or 1414, Kitabatake Mitsumasa had risen on behalf of a Prince of the Junior branch, and now he and Kusunoki Mitsumasa made another abortive effort in the same cause. The last and perhaps the most sensational attempt of the partisans of the Southern line was made in 1443. On the night of October 16 in that year, a band of determined men under Kusunoki Jiro and the Court noble Hino Arimitsu suddenly assailed the Palace from two directions, all but succeeded in killing or capturing the Emperor, and actually got possession of the regalia. They were soon driven out, however, and in their Hight to Hi-ei-zan. where one body of them entrenched themselves, the Mirror and the Sword were dropped and recovered by the pursuers. The other body made good their escape to the wilds of Odaigahara, carrying with them the Seal; and it was not until a year later that it found its way back to Kyoto, when the “rebels” had been overpowered and extirpated. Naturally enough immense importance was placed upon the possession of the sacred emblems; and the fact that from 1338 to 1352 the Northern Emperors held only a fabricated set of them, and from 1352 to 1392 no sacred emblems at all, has caused orthodox Japanese historians to omit them from the list of Sovereigns.

One natural result of this wasting and interminable succession war was greatly to weaken the reverence and respect in which the Emperor and his Court had been held. Ko Moronao is accused of having told his followers to “take the estates of the Emperor if they wanted estates. A living Emperor is a mere waster of the world’s substance, and a burden upon the people. He is not a necessity, but if we must have him a wooden effigy will do equally well.” The truth of this specific charge I have so far been unable to verify; but what is certain is that the behaviour of some of the Bushi towards the ex-Emperor in the streets of Kyoto was so outrageously insolent that Tadayoshi had the offenders decapitated (1342), and that military men did endeavour to seize the Imperial estates is plain from the incident that gave rise to the war between the Shogun and the Yamana chieftain in 1392.

Under the Kamakura régime the Imperial law courts had been by no manner of means superseded throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. The territorial extent and the territorial limitations of the Bakufu jurisdiction have already been fully, and it is to be hoped clearly, dealt with. In Kyoto especially nearly all ecclesiastical disputes about manors and what not, and all civilian cases had been decided not by Kamakura but by Imperial tribunals. Under the Ashikagas this ceased to be so; the tendency was to draw all legal business into the Muromachi Courts. In the words of a contemporary chronicler: “Ministers of State, who from generation to generation had received the nation’s homage, had to bow their heads to petty officials appointed by the Shogun, who was now the depositary of power. The Five Great Families began to curry favour with these low-born officials. They studied the provincial dialects and gestures because their own language and fashions were ridiculed by the Samurai whom they met in the streets. They even copied the costumes of the rustic warriors. But it was impossible for them to hide their old selves completely. They lost their traditional customs, and did not gain those of the provinces, so that, in the end, they were like men who had wandered from their way in town and country alike: they were neither Samurai nor Court Nobles.”

The loss of their traditional customs by the Kugé, however, was of much less consequence than the loss of their patrimonial acres. As has been stated over and over again, their revenues came from manors in the provinces, which were exempt from the control of the Bakufu or the attention of its taxation officials. But the stress of maintaining his armies in the field had constrained Takauji to procure an Imperial rescript authorising his officers to collect half the annual taxes of all civilian and ecclesiastical estates, the whole of which had hitherto been paid to the proprietors. Nor was this the worst of it. Military men began to encroach on the boundaries of such estates; and not unfrequently even to evict the bailiffs and to seize the manors of the civilians in their entirety. Naturally when the partisans of one or other of the rival Courts triumphed in their localities they promptly confiscated all the lands belonging to those on the losing side there. Then from 1347 onwards Kyoto was frequently in a virtual state of blockade; and as the Kugé could then get no supplies from their properties in the provinces, they were often on the brink of starvation. This drove great numbers of them to betake themselves to their manors in the vain hope of being able to save something from the wreck with which their fortunes were threatened, and Kyoto for the time being became a solitude, we are told.

If the Muromachi Bakufu gained at the expense of the Imperial law courts in the capital, it rapidly got shorn of its influence in the provinces. Formerly all succession disputes in, and boundary disputes between, military families in the country had been settled by the Kamakura tribunals. These were now, in default of being composed by the clan councillors, generally decided by an appeal to the sword. Sometimes for months at a time the Muromachi law courts were closed on account of the war, and to carry local cases there would often have been a sheer bootless waste of time and money. And besides these tribunals had often an unsavoury reputation for bribery. The hold of Takauji over his great vassals was comparatively loose; that of Yoshiakira notoriously so. Their support had to be bought by gifts of manors, and with investiture as Shugo sometimes over two or three or more provinces. To scan their administration too closely would in many cases simply drive them over into the opposing camp. Hence the net result was that the Imperial Court lost all control not only over the provinces but over the capital itself; that the Shoguns usurped the last shred of central authority possessed by the Emperors; while the Muromachi Bakufu was impotent to control the military class in the various circuits of the Empire as the Kamakura Boards had done. The process of decentralisation had undoubtedly set in strongly.

And what, it may be asked in conclusion, was the general effect of this Japanese analogue of the Wars of the Roses upon the fortunes of the common people? In England the struggle between York and Lancaster fell but lightly on the farmers, the labourers, and the artisans, who seem to have generally gone on their way prosperously, while the nobles and gentry with their mercenary troops were massacring each other. In fourteenth-century Japan things were very different; then perhaps the lot of the peaceful toilers and tillers of the soil was quite as miserable as that of the French peasant during the contemporary Hundred Years’ War. In many provinces each Court had its partisans, its Shugo, its taxation and other officials, and the hapless peasant was often so harried by requisitions first by one side and then by the other that he was reduced not to the verge of, but to actual, starvation. Then his house was frequently burned over his head, and his crops either trampled down and destroyed or cut down and carried off. The result was that the able-bodied absconded and took to brigandage and piracy. Once possessed of arms it was not difficult to find service with some chieftain in need of fighting men. We actually find the Southern Court utilising the services of pirate bands in operations against some of the enemy’s maritime fortresses on the Higo sea-board. Then on several occasions we read of promising campaigns having to be abandoned on account of the hopeless breakdown of the commissariat. In sheer defence, the great houses ultimately found themselves compelled to accord their peasants and serfs better treatment; and thus perhaps the position of the labourer was better in 1392 than it had been half-a-century before.

Seemingly the only industry that flourished in the Empire in these years was that of the armourer and the sword-smith, swords in fact constituting the chief in the limited list of items of export in the renewed trade with China.