JAMES MURDOCH' HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM THE ORIGINS

TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE PORTUGUESE IN 1542 AD

 

CHAPTER XX.

ASHIKAGA FEUDALISM.

 

AT the death of Hosokawa Yoriyuki shortly after the overthrow of the Yamanas in 1392, Yoshimitsu found himself in the possession of power and authority such as no Ashikaga Shogun had ever wielded before. The long succession war was now at an end, and a single Emperor once more reigned in Japan. Inasmuch as this Sovereign owed his position to Yoshimitsu, and inasmuch as all the Court nobles, especially those who had betaken themselves to Yoshino—were more or less dependent upon his bounty, the Shogun was now all-powerful at Court. Furthermore his hold over his great vassals had become firm and strict, for any revolt against him was now a rebellion which could not be legalised by the simple expedient of taking service with a rival Emperor. Moreover the Muromachi Bakufu machine suddenly brought to a high state of efficiency, presently succeeded in making itself respected in most parts of the Empire. Kamakura under a Kwanryo of Ashikaga stock was responsible for the administration of Kai and Izu in addition to the Eight Provinces of the Kwanto. One Tandai was at the head of affairs in Kyushu, while another had charge of Oshu, which was again withdrawn from the jurisdiction of Kamakura.

In the previous chapter the constitution of the central Muromachi administration has been already outlined. It only remains to say that in 1367 Shiba Yoshimasa, who had been Shitsuji since 1362, was made Kwanryo, and that thenceforth the Shogun’s first Minister was known by that title. This, in most respects, was the Shikken of Kamakura under a new name; only the office of Kwanryo was not hereditary in a single family as that of the Shikken had been in the house of the Hojo. After Shibas, Hosokawas held the post; and in 1398 a member of the house of Hatakeyama occupied it for the first time. Ultimately a tradition established itself that the Kwanryo might come from any of these three houses, and that he must come from one of them.

This appointment of Hatakeyama to the post gave rise to serious troubles in the following year. He and Ouchi Yoshihiro were on notoriously bad terms, and Ouchi was by no means inclined to bend to his will or to take orders from him. The Ouchi family was descended from the Korean Prince, Rinsei, who settled in Japan in 611; and in 1180 its chieftain, then settled in Suwo, was admitted into the military class. In the early half of the great succession war the Ouchis had fought on the Southern side; but in 1364 the then head of the clan passed over to the Ashikagas, and was rewarded with the office of Shugo in Nagato and Iwami, where the Southern partisans were still strong. His son, Yoshihiro, had done good service in Kyushu against the Kikuchis, and in the overthrow of the Yamanas he had played a prominent part in 1392, while in the same year he had shown great diplomatic tact and skill in successfully arranging the terms of accommodation between the rival Courts which brought the exhausting civil war to a close. As the reward of these distinguished services he was ultimately invested with the administration of the six provinces of Nagato, Suwo, Aki, Buzen, Kii, and Idzumi, and was in a fair way to become as powerful as the Yamanas had been. Accordingly he was in no mood to allow himself to be overshadowed by the new Kwanryo, Hatakeyama, his personal foe. Besides he conceived he had other grievances against Yoshimitsu himself; and his first deter­mination to effect the removal of the Minister presently developed into a design to substitute Mitsukane, the third Ashikaga Kwanryo of Kamakura, for Yoshimitsu. The latter was too prompt, however; before Kwanto troops could arrive Ouchi was invested in Sakai by Hatakeyama Motokuni and Shiba Yoshishige, and the rebellion ended with his fall in battle there (1399). Although there were some troubles in Kyushu, in Shinano, in the Kwanto (where the Oyama clan was extirpated), and in Mutsu, (where the Dates had to be dealt with) this revolt of Ouchi’s was the only serious commotion Yoshimitsu had to face in his later years.

Under his four immediate successors, the peace of the central portion of the Empire remained comparatively undisturbed, for although all four, except perhaps Yoshinori (1428- 1441), were anything but strong and able rulers, the Muromachi Bakufu machine continued to run well and smoothly on the whole. At the same time, such halcyon days of peace as the Empire had enjoyed between 1221 and 1274 under the firm but beneficent rule of the Hojo’s were no longer known.

 

Even in the Home Provinces and in Central Japan there were sporadic risings of the partisans of the Southern line. More than once the Kwanto was the scene of sanguinary strife, while Kyushu for one reason or another was generally in a state of turmoil and confusion. And meanwhile the Ashikagas in Kyoto, in spite of all their seeming prosperity, were surely paving the way for the undoing of their house.

The third Shogun Yoshimitsu is a baffling character to read. It was undoubtedly to Hosokawa Yoriyuki that he mainly owed his success, for, as has been said, it was Yoriyuki who was responsible for the efficient organisation or re-organisation of the administrative machinery as well as for the training and education of the young Shogun. However, on reaching manhood, while retaining a sincere affection and respect for Yoriyuki, Yoshimitsu broke with the traditions of Yoriyuki in several essential respects. From the day that Yoriyuki fired his Kyoto mansion, and retired to his estates, frugality and simplicity ceased to lie the watchwords of the Ashikaga administration, and that regime of unbridled and wasteful extravagance set in which was soon destined to make the Ashikaga peace a greater scourge to the people at large than the long succession war had been.

The first article of the Kemmu Shikimoku had been directed against Basara, or the luxuries of fashion; the comment winding up with the assertion that “this must be strictly kept within bounds.” Under Yoshimitsu this “Basara” was practically elevated to the position of a divinity, and easily became the best and most devoutly worshipped of all the eight million gods of the land. The Shogun was continually making progresses to various parts of the Empire, once to worship at Itsukushima, once to view Fuji-san, and frequently to fanes and shrines within a few days’ journey of the capital. On these occasions the magnificence of his retinue reminds the European student of the accounts of the Field of the Cloth of Gold he read in his schoolboy days, just as the description of Yoshimitsu’s Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) recalls Nero’s famous Golden House. Besides the Kinkakuji, which cost a fabulous sum, the Shogun erected or repaired many temples, and was as faithfully imitated in his building enterprises as in his other extravagances by his great vassals and wealthy subjects; and indeed by some who were not wealthy. And for the next half-century this mad craze continued. A somewhat later writer gives the following account of the capital in the first half of the fifteenth century:—

“The finest edifices were of course the Imperial Palaces. Their roofs seemed to pierce the sky and their balconies to touch the clouds. A lofty hall revealed itself at every fifth step and another at every tenth. In the park, weeping willows, plum-trees, peach-trees and pines were cleverly planted so as to enhance the charm of the artificial hills. Rocks shaped like whales, sleeping tigers, dragons or phoenixes, were placed around the lake where mandarin ducks looked at their own images in the clear water. Beautiful women wearing per­fumed garments of exquisite colours played heavenly music. As for the ‘Flower Palace’ of the Shogun, it cost six hundred thousand pieces of gold (about a million pounds sterling). The tiles of its roof were like jewels or precious metals. It defies description. In the Takakura Palace resided the mother of the Shogun, and his wife. A single door cost as much as twenty thousand pieces of gold. In the eastern part of the city stood the Karasumaru Palace built by Yoshimasa during his youth. It was scarcely less magnificent. Then there was the Fujiwara Palace of Sanjo, where the mother of the late Shogun was born. All the resources of human intellect had been employed to adorn it. At Hino and Hirohashi were mansions out of which the mother of the present Shogun came. They were full of jewels and precious objects. (The writer then enumerates the palaces of twenty-seven noble families.) Even men that made medicine and fortune-telling their profession and petty officials like secretaries had stately residences. There were some 200 of such buildings, constructed entirely of white pine and having four-post gates (i.e. gates with flank entrances for persons of inferior rank). Then there were a hundred provincial nobles, great and small, each of whom had a stately residence, so that there were altogether from 6,000 to 7,000 houses of a fine type in the capital.” In contradistinction to Yoritomo, who cared little for high Court rank or office himself, and who left instructions that his descendants should be very chary of accepting such until their career was obviously nearing its end, Yoshimitsu had a most insatiate appetite for titles and rank and honours. Although the Ashikaga was a comparatively junior branch of the Minamotos he constituted himself or got himself constituted Uji-Choja, or Head of the great warlike clan at large, while about the same date he declared the Presidency of the two Colleges of Junwa, and Sogaku, at that time held by Kuga, who was descended from the Emperor Kwammu to be hereditary in the line of the Shoguns. And henceforth no one of non-Minamoto stock was to be eligible for the office of Shogun.

All this, of course, might in itself be allowed to pass without comment. But Yoshimitsu sought and obtained the First Degree of Court rank, had himself declared equal with the Three Palaces, and invested with the Chancellorship of the Empire,—and much more of a similar nature. Since Taira Kiyomori’s time, no military man had held the Chancellorship; and for that reason perhaps Yoshimitsu has often been compared to Kiyomori. But in truth the methods of the two men were radically different in most respect. Yoshimitsu sought no matrimonial connections with the Imperial House, and he had nothing of Kiyomori’s -swaggering truculence. In many points he recalls Fujiwara Michinaga,—although Michinaga owed his influence mainly to his position of “maternal relative.” Yoshimitsu’s attitude towards the Sovereign was courteous and friendly; so friendly indeed that their two households seemed to be one and the same High Steward in the establishment of the ex-Emperor who professedly conducted the administration, the Shogun was supreme even in the ordering of the internal and domestic affairs of the Court, which by the way was amply provided with means to support its dignity.

Towards his great vassals also Yoshimitsu was exceedingly affable, often attending feasts and functions in their mansions, and returning their hospitality on a lavish scale. So successful was this course of conduct in preserving the peace of the Empire, that one cannot help the suspicion that it was adopted as much from well-pondered policy as from natural inclination. The age was essentially a luxury-loving one; devoted to gaiety, to ostentatious display, to extravagance and magnificence. Hosokawa Yoriyuki’s severe Puritanism had brought him into serious conflict with many influential interests, which Yoshimitsu afterwards exerted himself to conciliate. In short after the death of Yoriyuki in 1392, Yoshimitsu’s policy in many respects was a forerunner of that of Louis XIV of France. By drawing all the wealth and men of mark in the Empire to Kyoto, and inveigling the great Barons into a profuse and lavish way of living there, he insidiously sapped at once their moral fibre and their material resources, and so placed the provinces more and more at the mercy of the capital, and of the central administration. In the Hyojoshu or Great Council, sixteen of the twenty-four seats were occupied by great feudal chiefs, each of whom administered one or more provinces—generally by means of a deputy or deputies. That concord among these powerful and by nature often turbulent chieftains was on the whole so well maintained speaks elo­quently on behalf of Yoshimitsu’s ability and social tact.

The priesthood was still a mighty power in the land; and Yoshimitsu made great and successful exertions to earn the good-will of the monks. The older great monasteries, such as Hi-ei-zan, Kofukuji, and Koyasan, had indeed decayed in wealth and influence; and the Zenshu was now on the whole the most flourishing sect. In Kamakura their five great fanes were known as the Go-zan (Five Temples); and later on five of their chief seats in the metropolis or its vicinity were placed on a similar status, the only difference being that these five were made subordinate to a sixth, the Nanzenji. Yoshimitsu conferred special favours upon these, and furthermore directed that each province should have its own great Zen monastery. The Zen Abbot, Soseki, as confidential counsellor to Takauji and Yoshiakira had been a great political power in his time, and Manzai now occupied a similar position, while yet other Zen ecclesiastics were later on exceedingly influential as kuromaku. Their usual work was to draft the public and offi­cial documents of the time: but in addition to this it is un­questionable that the opinions they expressed were of great weight in deciding certain administrative questions of high importance.

As has been recorded, Takauji had appropriated half the taxes of all non-military estates for the support of his troops, and this regulation still held good in the case of all manors owned by civilians. But those held by temples and shrines were now relieved from that burden, while many religious houses received additional gifts of valuable landed property. Many monasteries were also repaired by a levy of the tax known as Dansen, which was imposed to meet special exigencies of the most miscellaneous character, while certain of them were endowed with the proceeds of custom-duties and transit-dues levied at barriers which wore now erected all over the country. For instance, the Kofukuji of Nara henceforth had a right to the customs of the port of Hyogo. The priests were not slow to erect barriers of their own on many roads and levy taxes on all traffic there; but this practice, as well as their possession of weapons of war, was forbidden. On the whole Yoshimitsu remained on very friendly terms with the religieux, who were flattered by the high consideration and reverence he exhibited towards them, and by his devotion to the study of the Sutras. In 1395, he nominally retired from active life and entered the priesthood; but as a matter of fact he continued to direct the administration down to his death in 1408.

Under Yoshimitsu the foreign relations and policy of Japan again became matters of importance. He was exceedingly anxious to establish commercial relations with China, for the profits from the Chinese trade were enormous and Yoshimitsu’s extravagance made a fresh source of revenue a vital necessity to him. Besides, he was greatly swayed by his Zen counsellors; and as the prestige of the Zen priests was greatly owing to the traditional prosecution of their studies in China, they were naturally eager to promote intercourse between Japan and the Middle Kingdom. In Takauji’s time the management of the Chinese trade had been almost entirely entrusted to them; and now that the gateway of Kyushu was again in Ashikaga hands they strongly urged a resumption of commercial intercourse with the Middle Kingdom. The chief obstacle, they knew, lay in the inveterate persistence of the Chinese Sovereigns in affecting to treat all neighbouring States as vassal kingdoms. But just as Henry IV deemed the possession of Paris “well worth a mass,” Yoshimitsu sadly in need of money considered that the immense profits of a lucrative foreign trade were no inadequate compensation for humouring Chinese vanity for the time being. Japanese pirates had been and were, worrying the whole Korean and Chinese sea-board, and when Chinese envoys appeared in order to remonstrate, the Shogun at once issued orders to the Kyushu Shugo to deal drastically with all the sea-rovers they could lay hands on. The efforts of these officers by no means put an end to the evil, but they served to show that the Japanese Government was sincere in its professions; and Yoshimitsu was presently furnished with permits for the dispatch of a certain number of merchant vessels yearly. In the diplomatic intercourse which followed Yoshimitsu is undoubtedly addressed as “King of Japan” by the Ming Emperor, and in his reply the Shogun not only makes use of the Chinese calendar, but he also speaks of himself as a vassal. Furthermore he proceeded to meet Chinese envoys at Hyogo; and escorting them to his Kinkakuji Palace, welcomed them there in a manner which led them to believe that they were dealing with a tributary to their master. These incidents have excited the hot indignation of successive generations of Japanese patriots.

The old State of Koryu came to an end in 1392, and the ancestor of the present line of Korean Sovereigns ascended the throne of what was henceforth known as the Kingdom of Chosen. Before the year was out envoys arrived in Kyoto; and Yoshimitsu at once embraced the opportunity of entering into friendly diplomatic and commercial relations with the new Peninsular dynasty.

Yoshimochi, Yoshimitsu’s son and successor (1408-1428), deviated from his father’s policy in two particulars. His relations with the Imperial Household were less intimate; in fact he treated it with a neglect that amounted to something like disrespect; and he showed no eagerness to maintain the intercourse with China. He was fortunate in his Zenshu counsellors; especially so in the person of Mansai; and his social relations with his great vassals in the Hyojoshu assured him of their support. As a matter of fact he troubled himself very little about administrative details personally; his life appears to have been spent in an interminable round of feasting and banqueting with some of the Daimyo and the Court nobles. His repeated failure to appear at Court functions was often owing to the circumstance that at the time he was sleeping off the effects of the debauch of the previous day. In modern times the Japanese are certainly a temperate people; but at this date the drunkenness that prevailed was worse than a scandal. Falstaff would have been thoroughly in his element in contemporary Kyoto. In 1423 Yoshimochi entered the priesthood, and resigned office in favour of his son Yoshikazu, then sixteen years old. But in two years this young hopeful literally drank himself to death! As Yoshikazu had been Yoshimochi’s only son, a grave succession question arose on the death of the latter in 1428. All his six brothers except Yoshitsugu, whom he had caused to be killed in 1418, had taken the tonsure; and so the way to the Kyoto Shogunate appeared to be open for the Ashikaga Lord of Kamakura, the ambitious third Kwanto-Kwanryo, Mochiuji. But one of Yoshimochi’s priestly brothers was selected as his successor. Yoshinori, as this sixth Ashikaga Shogun was thenceforth called, was then thirty-four years of age; and during his rule (from 1428 to 1441) he showed a considerable measure of vigour and determination. In the matter of intercourse with China he returned to the traditions of his father Yoshimitsu. As usual the Chinese were loud in their complaints about the ravages of Japanese pirates, whose numbers and audacity had notoriously increased since the death of Yoshimitsu in 1408. This was, no doubt, partly the result of recent developments in Kyushu. There had been a serious succession dispute in the Shimadzu family in Satsuma, a border warfare between Shimadzu and the Itos in Hyuga, a long and bloody contest between the two powerful houses of Aso and Kikuchi in Higo, and a triangular duel for the possession of the north of the island between Shoni, Otomo, and Ouchi, which latter house was now rapidly recovering from the disasters that had overtaken it in 1399. Shoni had been driven from his domains, and compelled to take refuge in Tsushima, while at one time the Bakufu Tandai had also been forced to abandon his office and retire to Kyoto. One outcome of all this was that many Kyushu Samurai were stripped of all their property and reduced to beggary; and these men of broken fortunes generally betook themselves to sea-roving. In many Japanese historical manuals we meet with mention of the reappearance of a Mongol fleet at Tsushima, and a Japanese victory there in which 2,700 heads were taken (1420). A glance at Korean records suffices to show that the Mongols had nothing to do with the affair; it was a Korean punitive expedition fitted out to make reprisals for a great piratical raid in the previous spring that then came into collision with the Japanese. However the matter went no further; and from about 1436 So, the Daimyo of Tsushima, was allowed to send 50 merchant vessels every year with cargoes of Japanese goods to be exchanged for Chinese and Korean produce, while he also received a permit for the establishment of a Japanese settlement of not more than sixty houses at each of the ports of Fusan, Ché-pho, and Yöm-pho.

During the first four decades of the fifteenth century the Kwanto was much less disturbed than Kyushu, but still it was not altogether without its commotions. There the great house was that of Uyesugi, which was divided into the three branches of Inukake, Yamanouchi, and (later on) Ogigayatsu, so named from their respective seats in the neighbourhood of Kamakura. A Uyesugi chieftain was also Shugo of Echigo, and so was under the jurisdiction of the Kyoto Bakufu, in the Great Council of which he occupied a seat. About 1415 Uyesugi Ujinori of the Inukake branch was Ashikaga Mochiuji’s Shitsuji; but for some obscure reasons he was stripped of his office in 1416. He thereupon determined to replace Mochiuji by his brother Mochinaka. When Ujinori seized Kamakura the young Kwanryo fled first to Izu, and then to Suruga. Hence he was escorted to Kyoto by Imagawa, the Shugo of the province; and the Kyoto Shogun Yoshimochi thereupon ordered the Kwanto Daimyo to crush Ujinori and restore the fugitive Kwanryo. Meanwhile another Uyesugi, Norimoto of the Yamanouchi branch, had marched upon Kamakura at the head of Echigo levies; and as Ujinori had been abandoned by most of his partisans, this Echigo army had an easy triumph. Mochinaka, Ujinori and forty of their followers then committed harakiri, while in Kyoto Yoshimochi’s own brother Yoshitsugu, who was found to be implicated in the affair, was put to death in 1418.

Uyesugi Norimoto was succeeded in the office of Shitsuji by his son, the famous Norizane, in 1419. In 1428 this Norizane did not encourage his master Mochiuji in his pretensions to the Kyoto Shogunate; and accordingly he became an object of dislike and hatred to the latter, who several times endeavoured to compass the death of his all-powerful Minister. In 1437 Mochiuji, who always spoke slightingly of Yoshinori as the Priest Shogun, formed a plot for his overthrow, and as a first step attempted to arrest Norizane. Norizane however escaped to Kodzuke, and there mustered his vassals and at the same dispatched urgent messengers to Kyoto for support. The result was that Mochiuji went down before the overwhelming force thrown against him and was driven to commit harakiri, as were also his uncle Mitsusada and his eldest son Yoshihisa (1439). His three youngest sons escaped to Nikko; and in the following year Yuki, the Lord of Koga in Shimosa, received them in his castle and espoused their cause. He was soon invested and reduced by the Uye­sugi; and two of his three proteges were captured in their flight and put to death at the respective ages of thirteen and eleven, only the youngest, a child of five, escaping. Henceforth there was no Ashikaga Lord of Kamakura; and until 1449 the Uyesugi exercised the office of Kwanryo without dispute.

At this conjuncture the Shogun Yoshinori had acted with great promptness and resolution, qualities he had already displayed on several occasions. In 1435 he had made very short work of the monks of Hi-ei-zan when their Reverences once more essayed to disturb the peace of the capital; and since then they had been praying for his death. Certain abuses in the Court, in the households of the Imperial Princes and among the Court nobles had been repressed not over gently; and the Shogun had succeeded in making many enemies in these circles. But these were impotent to do him harm; it was only when he made an effort to curb certain of his great military vassals that he became threatened with real danger. He had caused the chiefs of the Toki and Isshiki clans to be executed; and in 1441 he formed the project of breaking the power of the great Akamatsu family by partitioning its extensive domains of Bizen, Harima, Mimasaka, and some cantons of Inaba and Tajima. The Akamatsu chieftain on learning of this held his peace, and invited the Shogun to a banquet to be held in his Kyoto mansion on July 16, 1441. When the carouse was at its height, two of Akamatsu’s retainers set loose all the horses in the stables and drove them out into the courtyard, where they bit and kicked each other and created a great uproar. In the midst of this, all the doors were suddenly shut; and another retainer jumped up and seized the Shogun by the hands. As he was struggling to free himself, another vassal came behind him and cut off his head at a blow. With this grisly trophy Akamatsu made his escape to his castle of Shirahata in Harima, where he was presently invested by Hosokawas, Takedas and Yamanas all eager for a share in his domains. He and several of his leading vassals committed suicide, and the power of the clan was broken for the time being.

Yoshinori was succeeded by his eldest son Yoshikatsu, who died in his tenth year in 1443, and was then followed by his brother Yoshimasa, two years his junior. Of course this child, who received his patent as Shogun in 1447, cannot reasonably be held responsible for the maladministration of the next ten or twelve years. But the fact remains that the very worst that the Empire had to suffer during the minority of this eighth Ashikaga Shogun, Yoshimasa, was the merest trifle to the miseries that had to be endured under his personal rule.

And yet the period from 1443 to 1454 was the reverse of a quiet or happy one. Kyushu as usual was in a state of turmoil. In Yoshinori’s time the Tandai had been hunted out of the island, and Yoshinori, unable to find any commander willing or competent to undertake the duties of the office, had been compelled to content himself with sanctioning Ouchi’s operations against Otomo and Shoni. Now, in 1441, neither Otomo nor Shoni nor Kikuchi nor Chiba had moved, when ordered to join in the attack upon Akamatsu to avenge the murder of the Shogun Yoshinori; and by the Bakufu this was regarded as a dire offence. Ouchi was thereupon commissioned to resume operations against them. This time, the Ouchis were highly successful; Shoni was again driven to take refuge in Tsushima; Otomo’s capital of Funai was captured, and the north of the island practically reduced. One result of this was a marked increase of the corsair bands, who now had an opportunity of doing Ouchi serious damage at sea, for he had lately been entrusted with the apportionment of the Chinese permits for 200 Japanese merchantmen to make an annual voyage to Ningpo. What with its victories in Kyushu, and with the resources being amassed in the over-sea trade, the house of Ouchi was now rapidly recovering from the great disaster that had overtaken it in 1399. The Yamanas, by whose fall the Ouchis had so greatly profited in 1392, had now also all but regained their former strength. As the reward of their distinguished services in the campaign against Akamatsu in 1441 they had been entrusted with the administration of his provinces of Harima, Hizen, and Mimasaka, and this with their own provinces of Tajima, Inaba, and Hoki made them exceedingly formidable, all the more so as they were within easy striking distance of Kyoto, where the central administration was daily becoming weaker.

The nemesis of Yoshimitsu’s extravagance and magnificence was now overtaking his descendants. The fall of the Hojos had been mainly occasioned by economic and social abuses, and history was now repeating itself in the case of the Ashikaga, whose fiscal and financial administration was perhaps the very worst that Japan has ever seen.

From first to last under the feudal system the chief source of revenue was the land-tax. At no time perhaps has the rate of this been uniform over the whole of this Empire; it has generally varied not so much in different provinces, as in different fiefs, and often on neighbouring manors. Even at the present day it is far from uniform in Japan, for while in some circuits the survey is accurate and exact, in others it is not so. So to state what the true rate is or has been at any time is always a matter of great difficulty. But from an examination of many documents so much is clear. Under the Kamakura Bakufu before the Mongol invasions the levy was generally comparatively light; in Tokugawa times it was considerably heavier, and under the Ashikagas it was still more onerous. Yoshimitsu had ordered a general survey of the Empire; but about the result of this details are lacking. What we do have is a return or perhaps an estimate of merely the rice-lands under cultivation about the middle of the fifteenth century. As the tan of those days measured 1,449 square yards against the 1,200 square yards of that of the present time, the 946,606 cho of 1450 would be equal to 1,037,920 cho of the twentieth century, when the total extent is a little under 3,000,000 cho, or some 7,500,000 acres. Besides this there was, of course, a considerable superficies under other crops; but of the exact extent of that we know nothing.

It is no doubt surprising to find so much of the soil under cultivation after the long and devastating civil war, and at a time when the Empire was still in a state of turmoil in many quarters. But, as in France, the recovery of prosperity after the ravages of war has always been rapid in Japan. The explanation is that the actual destruction of capital has never been very great. Stock-farming was almost unknown; agricultural implements were of the simplest and most inexpensive nature; the farmer needed no clothing at all in summer and not much in winter; his household furniture consisted of little more than a rice-pot, a few bowls, and some sets of chopsticks. When his house was burned over his head it was no irreparable loss, for it was nothing but a flimsy hut that could be run up again in a few days. In the fighting around Sakai in 1399, we are told that more than 10,000 farmers’ houses were reduced to ashes. This on the face of it looks a great calamity for the poor peasants; but the probability is that it did not interfere with their work in the fields for more than a day or two. What the farmer dreaded was not so much war, as famine, plague, and above all the tax-gatherer, who in Ashikaga times exacted in one guise or another something like 70 per cent of the produce of his fields. As a certain quantity of the manure necessary to raise a crop had generally to be bought, not much, if indeed anything at all, could have remained in the cultivator’s hands.

In seasons of famine the misery of the farmers was unspeakable. Such of them as had the strength left to do so would crawl into the gay capital in the vain hope of finding something to keep soul and body together there. In the great dearth of 1421-2, Yoshimochi did indeed issue orders to his officers to adopt some sadly inadequate relief measures; but in 1454 the famine-stricken peasants were simply left to perish in the streets, and a daily average of 700 or 800 corpses bad to be taken up and disposed of. The females of the family were then consigned to the brothels, while the boys were often sold to the priests, who shaved their eyebrows, powdered their faces, dressed them in female garb and put them to the vilest of uses, for since the days of Yoshimitsu, who had set an evil example in this as in so many other matters, the practice of paederasty had become very common, especially in the monasteries, although it was by no means confined to them. And in the midst of all this misery the Shoguns usually deigned to evince no tokens of compassion for the stricken multitude. While the people were dying by the road sides Yoshimochi made a progress to Nara whose magnificence almost equalled those of his father; and in 1454 Yoshimasa abated not a bit in the indulgence of his most dissolute and extravagant whims. And in 1461, when in the course of two months as many as 80,000 people perished of plague and famine in Kyoto alone, he went on with his fantastic building projects, until the receipt of a satirical poem from the Emperor put him to the blush. Even then, all he did was to request certain of the metropolitan temples to distribute some miserable doles, the administration making no further effort to grapple with the awful crisis. For all the world, the Shogun and his minions in this terrible year might well have been of the breed of the Gods of the Choric Song in Tennyson’s “Lotos-Eaters.” In the great famine of 1231-2 Hojo Yasutoki wore nothing but old clothes, and reduced the number of his meals—always of the plainest fare—to two a day, thus setting an excellent example to his officers, who were not slow to imitate him, while at the same time both he and they laboured strenuously from morn to eve devising and super­intending measures of effective relief.

The Impot foncier in course of time came to constitute only a fraction of the liabilities of the tax-payer—house tax, door tax, cart tax, rice-shop tax, taxes on pawn-shops, on sake and on saké-warehouses, of which there were 327 in the capital alone, and on fire-proof “godowns,” were imposed and levied with increasing stringency. The saké-warehouse tax, for example, under Yoshimitsu had been exacted only four times a year; later on it was levied once a month and under Yoshimasa several times a month. But perhaps the worst impost of all was the Dansen, an extraordinary tax imposed at first perhaps once in six or seven years to meet such contingencies as the expenses of a coronation, or the rebuilding of the palace. But latterly it had come, to be raised several times a year, on the most frivolous of pretences; sometimes indeed on no pretence at all. Outraging as it did every single one of Adam Smith’s four maxims of equality, certainty, convenience, and economy, it was really nothing more or less than a sponge to absorb what the revenue officers might so far have left in the possession of the producer.

In their own provinces and districts the Shugo and the Jito were not slow to imitate the fiscal vagaries of the central administration; and in addition to this they went on establishing barriers on the highways and on the waterways, where heavy tolls were exacted from all passengers and merchandise passing through them. The Shuyo and the Daimyo were in urgent need of money to enable them to keep afloat in the maelstrom whirl of the fashionable life of the capital, where they had to give elaborate banquets and other entertainments in their palatial residences, to present the Shogun with costly gifts, and latterly to bribe the minions who had come to have the disposal of patronage and the plums of office. But some of the great provincial Lords were beginning to use their money for other purposes; for instance in 1454 we read that the Yamana chieftain caused great anxiety to his neighbours and in Kyoto, by taking “landless men without any occupation” into his service. In a few years this practice was destined to become not unusual if not general; and it was this that really dealt the death-blow to slavery if not serfdom in Japan. There being no such things as bankruptcy courts in those days, an insolvent debtor often had to become the practical slave of his creditor. Now with an opening for service under a great feudal chief, able-bodied debtors who could handle sword or bow could afford to laugh at creditors and law-courts alike.

It is tolerably plain that all the fabulous magnificence and grandeur of the capital at this time were reared upon the oppression and degradation of the people at large. For centuries the common folk, the base-born semmin, had been wonderfully patient and submissive, and apart from absconding and taking to brigandage they had made but few practical protests against the iniquitous treatment they were subjected to. Now at last, however, the worm began to turn. From 1447 onward there was a series of well-organised and concerted popular émeutes, the fellows of Wat Tyler’s rebellion in England, and of the Jacquerie in France. Kyoto was generally their centre; but they spread all through the Home Provinces,—(much damage being done in Nara especially)—on to Harima on the one hand and to Omi on the other. The demand of these mobs was for a Tokusci (Benevolent Act of Government), which was just the equivalent of the old Roman nova tabula, or a summary cancellation of all indebtedness. This Tokusci was no new thing; we have already met with one so early as towards the end of the seventh century; and since that time, in seasons of great national distress and even on such occasions as the death of a Sovereign, they had been proclaimed in a modified form. The theory was that they were in civil, what an amnesty was in criminal, law. Already under the Ashikagas there had been Tokusci on several occasions, but not of the sweeping nature now demanded by the rioters, while the Muromachi Bakufu had made important modifications in the old usury laws. As the result of the great riots (1447, 1451, 1457 and 1461) the authorities yielded so far as to declare debts to be liquidated by the payment of one-tenth of the principal, obligations to shrines and temples being excepted. Thereupon some of the religious houses were fired and pillaged. In Kyoto itself it was the “godowns” and the pawn-brokers’ shops that were the chief objects of attack, for the mob was intent on destroying all bonds and mortgages and such like legal documents. But as a matter of fact a very considerable portion of the city was burnt and countless houses entered and pillaged. Certain of the Daimyo were called upon to restore order; but in 1461 it took them several weeks to do so. And the cure was almost as bad as the disease, for many of their retainers being heavily in debt, now took the opportunity of firing the money-lender’s house or breaking into his strong room and repossessing themselves of the acknowledgements they had given him. Yoshimasa yielded to the demand of the mob greatly because it suited his own purposes to do so. He himself was deeply in debt at most times; and his frequent proclamations of Tokusci subsequently were dictated as much by the wish to evade his own financial obligations as by any other consideration. Naturally the result of these Tokusci was untold disaster to industry and commerce, for apart from rendering any system of credit impossible, they together with the Dansen made the merchant and the manufacturer abandon all hope of acquiring a competency and the capitalist all expectation of accumulating wealth.

Meanwhile a course of events was in train destined to thrust all economic and industrial problems into the background, to reduce most of the capital io a heap of ashes, and to make its ruins the battleground of two great hosts for more than a decade. Here in dealing with the incidents that led up to the Great War of Onin (1467-1477) exigencies of space compel me to compress into a few paragraphs what can only be properly elucidated in a series of chapters.

In the previous chapter something was said about the fashion in which succession disputes in the great feudal families were wont to be decided during the Great Civil War. After the conclusion of peace in 1392 Yoshimitsu made a tolerably successful effort to have such questions settled by the Bakufu, and not by an appeal to arms. But on his death, in the outlying portions of the Empire at least, such matters were almost invariably determined by the sub-feudatories of the house in which they arose,—sometimes without fighting, but often after a trial of strength on the battlefield. Now in Yoshimasa’s time these succession disputes became exceedingly common; and in the cases where the Shogun was appealed to his intervention generally served to do nothing but aggravate the situation. Yoshimasa was possessed of no independent judgement of his own; he was almost entirely under the influence of his consort Tomi Ko and other Court ladies, and of favourites like Ise Sadachika. And the most unfortunate part of the business was that he was always inclined to adopt the views of the latest counsellor who had chanced to get his ear, the result being that since the time of Temmu Tenno the Empire had never perhaps witnessed such an exhibition of Chorei Bokai, incompetence and confusion.

I shall pass over dissensions like those in the Shinano house of Ogasawara, and in that of the Togashi,—(which had furnished Kaga with Governors or Shugo for four centuries),—without comment, inasmuch as the disturbances they gave rise to were local merely. But those in the great houses of Shiba and Hatakeyama developed into national questions and precipitated a terrible civil war.

There were two branches of the Shiba family, one settled in Echizen, the other in Mutsu. The latter had split up into the sept of Ozaki and that of Mogami, which played a prominent part in the north-east of Japan in the early Tokugawa age. But it was the Echizen branch that was the great Shiba house in Ashikaga times. The first Kwanryo had been a Shiba; and besides holding this great office he had been Shugo of the six provinces of Echizen, Etchu, Noto, Shinano, Sado, and Wakasa. About 1450 we find the Shiba chieftain Yoshitake invested with the administration of Echizen. Owari, and Totomi. These provinces were not contiguous; and so in two of them at least Yoshitake had to be represented by a Shugodai or Deputy Shugo. Now the position of these Deputy Shugo was very different from that of the old Vice-Governors. The latter had not been appointed by their immediate superior the Governor; but by the central authorities. The Vice-Governor was no vassal of the Governor’s, but his fellow officer. The Deputy Shugo, on the other hand, was not only the mere nominee of the Shugo, but was actually his vassal. Furthermore the office of Deputy Shugo tended to become hereditary in the family of the holder of the office, and these great vassals in the provinces they administered often became more influential than their lords. At this time the chief great vassals of the Shiba were the Oda in Owari, and the Asakura and Kai in Echizen, the last being the most powerful of all. In fact the Kai chieftain was at this time to the Shibas, what the Mayor of the Palace was to the Merovingians.

Shiba Yoshitake, being childless, had adopted the adopted son of an uncle of his; and on Yoshitake’s death in 1452 the Shiba family made this adopted son, Yoshitoshi, his successor. Kai was not satisfied with this, and Yoshitoshi was not minded to brook his vassal’s interference. Sometime later on Yoshitoshi was put in command of 10,000 troops for service in the Kwanto; but after starting from Kyoto, he suddenly wheeled off to the north and invested Kai in Tsuruga by land and sea. Kai had only 800 men in his castle; but taking advantage of a great typhoon he found these quite numerous enough to rout his beleaguerers, The Shogun could not overlook this episode; and the ultimate result was the extirpation of the Kais on the one hand, and the flight of Yoshitoshi to Suwo on the other, a new head for the house of Shiba being provided in the person of Yoshikado, the son of Shibukawa Yoshino, who was nominated by the great vassals. Yoshimasa’s assent to this was obtained through his favourite, Ise Sadachika, to whom the retainers had made suitable presents. This was in 1459, and some time afterwards Ise Sadachika married the sister of the fugitive Yosbitoshi’s wife. This lady at last prevailed upon her husband to espouse Yosbitoshi’s cause; and in 1466. Yoshitoshi was recalled to Kyoto, and the Shogun then decided that he was the rightful head of the house of Shiba. Meanwhile the man in possession,—Yoshikado—had married a daughter of the great Yamana Sozen, and Yoshikado now invoked the support of his formidable father-in-law, who at once mustered a strong army and marched upon Kyoto. This greatly frightened the vacillating Shogun; and Yoshikado was now not only recognised as the Shiba, but actually invested (1467) with the office of Kwanryo, Yoshitoshi having to flee for his life!

Synchronous with the succession-dispute in the Shiba family had been a similar one in the house of Hatakeyama. The chief difference was that whereas among the Shibas the complications occurred after the death of the childless chief Yoshitake, those in the Hatakeyama family arose while the Kwanryo. Mochikuni, was still alive. Here, too, the struggle was really between the great vassals of the clan. Mochikuni wished to make his son Yoshinari his successor. Now this would throw the power into the hands of a certain Suya, who had been appointed Yoshinari’s guardian, a contingency which the hitherto all-powerful vassals Jimbo and Yusa could not view with equanimity. Accordingly they declared that Yoshinari, being the son of a concubine, was not the rightful heir, and armed in support of the claims of Mochikuni’s nephew, Masanaga. Mochikuni then appealed to the Shogun, who authorised him to put Masanaga to death. The latter thereupon took refuge in the mansion of Yamana Sozen, with whom Mochikuni had been on notoriously bad terms, ever since Mochikuni had endeavoured to re-establish the house of Akamatsu in Harima, which province had come into Yamana’s possession in 1441. In 1451 a Yamana vassal had been killed by one of Mochikuni’s followers. Thereupon Yamana challenged Mochikuni to single combat; and when the affair was patched up by the surrender of the offender to Yamana, Yamana had cut him to pieces with his own hand.

Yamana now espoused Hatakeyama Masanaga’s cause with great vigour. One night in September 1454 he invested Mochikuni’s mansion and fired it over his head. Mochikuni took refuge in one of the big temples, while his son Yoshinari fled to Kawachi. Thereupon Masanaga went and paid his respects to the Shogun, who cancelled the warrant for his arrest and execution, and declared him head of the Hatakeyama house, Mochikuni having just then died (1455). Next year Yoshinari appeared at the head of a strong body of Kawachi troops to attack Masanaga, but the Shogun succeeded in patching up a peace between them, and the house of Hatake­yama was then divided into two branches.

For some years Yoshinari was greatly favoured by the Shogun; but in 1460 all the trees presented by him to adorn the grounds of one of the Shogun’s new buildings withered,—a very serious omen,—while Yoshinari was also accused of infringing the lately issued ordinances against the taking of animal life. This was sufficient to bring Yoshinari into ill odour with the capricious and superstitious Shogun and to restore Masanaga to high favour. Yoshinari had fled to the south, and Masanaga was commissioned to pursue and kill him. In Kawachi, Yoshino, and Koyasan, a war between them went on for some six or seven years (1460-1467). In the course of the struggle Yoshinari with vastly inferior forces established such a reputation as a skilful and capable captain that Yamana Sozen, now knitting a great party together, entered into an alliance with him and threw his former protégé Masanaga overboard. Masanaga had been made Kwanryo in 1464; he had now (1467) to give way to Yamana’s nominee Shiba Yoshikado, and muster troops to defend his life.

The great faction that Yamana was now banding together was really directed against his own son-in-law Hosokawa Katsumoto. This Hosokawa was perhaps the ablest and most remarkable man of his time. Noted for his refinement and culture, in the Europe of his day he would undoubtedly have made his mark among the great Humanists of the age. In many directions his erudition was sound and solid, especially in medicine, of which he was an ardent student. As an administrator he was exceedingly capable; and if not in statesmanship, at all events in the devious ways of statecraft, he had no equal in contemporary Japan. Born in 1430, he became Kwanryo in 1445 at the age of fifteen; and with a break of three years (1449-1452) he held this important post down io 1464. In the exercise of the office, although not so great as Yoriyuki had been, he was no failure; but it was in the administration of his own wide domains that he made his lasting reputation. At a word from him 60,000 retainers of his own would take the field at any moment, while he could always rely upon the fidelity of collateral Hosokawas, who could muster 21,000 more. From first to last he kept his great vassals in strict order; it was not until a score of years after his demise that the family of Hosokawa began to be scourged with the curse that had smitten the fellow-Kwanryo houses of Shiba and Hatakeyama.

Originally Hosokawa’s relations with his turbulent father- in-law, Yamana Sozen, had been exceedingly friendly. When the Red Monk,—(as the latter was nick-named from his flame­coloured countenance),—had fired Hatakeyama Mochikuni’s mansion over his head, the Shogun Yoshimasa in his exasperation declared him an outlaw, and was on the point of issuing orders to have him put to the sword. However Hosokawa, who had from the first associated himself with his father-in-law in espousing the cause of Hatakeyama Masanaga, succeeded in mitigating Yoshimasa’s wrath, and the Red Monk was merely punished by relegation to his own provinces.

Shortly after, one of Hosokawa’s relatives then in the capital revived the project of restoring the Akamatsu family to its former possessions; and with the Shogun’s approval, he induced the former Akamatsu retainers in Harima to rise against the Yamanas. At once the Red Monk took the field at the head of 20,000 men. Pouring into Harima, his troops swept everything before them; and then pushing on to the capital, entered it with drums beating and war conches blowing. This effectually overawed the Shogun; and Harima had to be left in Yamana’s hands.

Three years later (1458) certain escheated manors in Kaga, Ise, Izumo, and Bizen were bestowed upon the Akamatsu chief; and the Red Monk discerning, as he fancied, the hand of his son-in-law the Kwanryo in this, came to the conclusion that ultimately a struggle between them was inevitable. For the next few years he devoted all his energies to making friends with the great Daimyo; and by 1466 he deemed himself ready for the contest. True, against the 81.000 Hosokawa vassals he could muster no more than 41,000 retainers of his own; but his alliances with Isshiki (5,000), Toki (8,000), Rokkaku (5,000), Shiba Yoshikado (10,000), and the Hatakeyamas—Yoshinari (7,000) and Yoshito (3,000)—put 38,000 more men at his disposal, while he could count upon the active sympathy of at least 10,000 besides. This would give him a grand total of some 90,000 troops. At last all that was wanted was a plausible pretext for a rupture. This, however, Hosokawa was in no haste to supply, for he was aware that the Red Monk was just as much his superior in the field, as he was the Red Monk’s at the council-board.

Meanwhile the situation in the Shogun’s court had become peculiar. Yoshimasa had got tired of office, and wished to resign it soon. But although he was now thirty years of age, he so far had had no son. Accordingly he begged his younger brother, Yoshimi, who had entered the priesthood and become an Abbot, to return to secular life with a view to succeeding him. At first Yoshimi would not listen to the proposal; but on Yoshimasa undertaking to make any son that might be born to him become a priest, Yoshimi at last yielded to his entreaties (1464). Thereupon Hosokawa resigned the office of Kwanryo to his friend and protégé Hatakeyama Masanaga, and assumed the stewardship of the household which Yoshimi now established. Then in the following year the Shogun’s consort Tomi Ko at last presented him with the son who was afterwards known as Yoshihisa. Although Yoshimasa was ready to abide by his agreement, the Lady Tomi was not inclined to see her offspring deprived of the succession. Accordingly she secretly opened up communications with the Red Monk, and obtained a promise from him to support her when the proper season arrived.

Now at this date Yoshimasa was greatly under the sway of Ise Sadachika, who was very justly regarded by Hosokawa as a banefully corrupting and disturbing influence in the administration. Sadachika had given mortal offence to the Red Monk in the Shiba affair; and when the Red Monk successfully exerted himself to get Sadachika degraded and banished, Hosokawa purposely kept very quiet. He had however been very unobtrusively bringing up his own troops to Kyoto, and forming compacts with other chieftains which presently swelled his forces to 160,000 fighting men—not all in the capital, of course. Even when adherents of the Red Monk (February 1467) assailed and routed the ex-Kwanryo Hatakeyama Masanaga in his retreat in the outskirts of the capital, Hosokawa made no movement, although he stood pledged to support Masanaga. The reason was that the Shogun had sent Yoshimi to both camps to warn the leaders that the first to strike a blow would be proclaimed a rebel.

For some months the armies lay watching each other, Hosokawa’s lines being to the east and north of the Bakufu offices in Muromachi, and the Red Monk’s to the west and south. The troops filled all the great mansions of their Lords, and occupied the temples and all buildings of strategic importance, while barricades and other defences were thrown up at weak spots in the lines where attacks might be expected. Again in May, Yoshimi acting upon instructions from Yoshimasa visited both leaders and repeated his previous warning, and for a few days the barricades disappeared. But neither of the chiefs felt that he could afford to withdraw his forces from Kyoto; if he did so and his opponent remained, he would infallibly be declared a rebel by Yoshimasa as soon as he was left exposed to pressure from one side only. As weeks passed the strain became unbearable; and at last, on July 7, 1467, the collision came, when some of the subordinate captains began to contest the possession of a mansion that lay between the outposts of the rival hosts. In this special affair Hosokawa’s men had the best of it, but in the general fighting which at once ensued they made no great headway. Still their numerical superiority promised them an ultimate triumph, and for the rest of the summer the Red Monk was very anxious about the result.

Then, in September, Ouchi Masahiro with 20,000 men from Yamaguchi, and Kono with 2,000 from Iyo, fought their way up to Kyoto, and joined Yamana. This substantial reinforcement entirely altered the aspect of affairs. The Red Monk now assumed the offensive, and in the great battles of September 29, when the Imperial Palace was taken, and of October 30, when the Sokokuji was captured, his followers won decided successes. Both edifices were fired and burned to the ground; in the first contest 50,000 Yamana troops came into action, and after the second, we are told, the streets for miles were heaped with “ everal tens of thousands of corpses.”

The year 1467 expired with the military situation in the capital entirely in favour of the Yamanas; and in 1468 they continued to have the best of it on the whole. On the Japanese New Year’s day, when almost everything in that drunken age was supposed to be incapable of taking care of itself, Hosokawa ordered a general assault, mainly with the object of recovering the site of the Sokokuji. The result was tremendous slaughter and a disastrous repulse. Then ensued a lull in active operations, but on April 28 there was another serious engagement, in which as usual the Red Monk was victorious. Hosokawa was now thrust into a narrow nook behind the Bakufu offices, which he had the greatest difficulty in maintaining. And yet although thus handsomely beaten in Kyoto, it was Hosokawa who was the real victor in the strife.

It was Hosokawa’s gifts as a statesman, or, if you like, his statecraft that saved him. He had been careful not to move till he was assured in his own mind that the Shogun would formally commission him to chastise the Red Monk. This was no easy matter to compass; for Yoshimasa was then personally well-disposed towards Yamana, while his consort, the Lady Tomi, backed by a strong faction in her husband’s Court, exerted herself strongly on behalf of her secret confederate. Hosokawa, however, was able to secure the banishment of twelve of the faction opposed to him some time after he got his commission and so provided against the chance of having it revoked. He furthermore made sure of the Emperor and the ex-Emperor by inducing them to remove to the Bakufu offices, where quarters were provided for their reception. Hosokawa’s position was thoroughly legalised, while the Red Monk was technically a public enemy; and this circumstance in course of time began to weigh seriously with certain of the Yamana confederates, some of whom came over to the Hosokawa camp, while others quietly slipped off home. Yet these desertions were not so numerous as to affect the general result. But meanwhile Hosokawa had taken still more effective measures to cause a serious shrinkage in the numbers opposed to him in and around Kyoto. Emissaries of his wore presently at work in the provinces of his antagonists, inciting their vassals to revolt, or their neighbours to attack them, and matters ultimately became so threatening in Ouchi’s domains that that formidable chieftain was at last constrained to hasten home to defend his own ancestral possessions, while the Red Monk himself had to detach contingents to help to make head against local adversaries. In other directions this device of Hosokawa’s was equally successful, and he was strong in the fact that his previous excellent administration of his own broad domains, and the firm hold lie had upon the fidelity of his sub­feudatories, made it hopeless for his adversaries to attempt to retaliate upon him in kind.

By this time the struggle between Hosokawa and Yamana had assumed the appearance of a succession war between members of the Shogunal house itself. On September 24, 1467, Ashikaga Yoshimi, feeling his position insecure, had fled from Kyoto; and for the last year or so he had been living in Ise under the protection of Kitabatake, the Governor of the Province. After repeated requests to return to the capital, he at last did so in October 1468, attended by an escort of 2,500 men. Meanwhile the favourite, Ise Sadachika, had returned to the Shogun’s Court and was again as influential as before, while Hino Katsuakira, the Lady Tomi’s close confederate, was also in possession of Yoshimasa’s ear. Yoshimi demanded the removal of these two intriguers; and upon the demand being refused he went into Hosokawa’s camp. There to his profound astonishment he was advised to re-enter the priesthood. He thereupon again escaped and took refuge on Hi-ei-zan; whence on December 17 he was escorted into the Yamana camp, the Red Monk now declaring that the object he was fighting for was the assertion of Yoshimi’s just rights! Ten days later the Shogun obtained a decree from the Court stripping Yoshimi of all his offices and putting him to the ban; and early in 1469 Yoshimasa’s four-year-old son Yoshihisa was formally declared heir to the Shogunate. This was a new shuffling of the cards with a vengeance! The Red Monk, the Lady Tomi’s secret confederate, was now fighting for nothing but the assertion of the just rights of the Lady Tomi’s most detested enemy.

Two years later there was perhaps a still more startling development. So long as the Sovereign remained in Hosokawa’s hands, the Red Monk must remain, technically at least, a rebel. At last so many supporters had fallen away on that account that Yamana resorted to the desperate expedient of reviving the claims of the Southern line. In 1470 a pretender calling himself Prince Hidaka, and claiming to be a descendant of Daigo II, raised his flag in Kii; but in January 1471 his career was brought to an end by Hatakeyama Masanaga. Then, in September 1471, a Prince of the Southern line was actually brought into the Yamana camp, and treated as Emperor, the Red Monk now professing to be fighting in support of the legitimate Imperial line! This did not please Yoshimi; and in course of time, but when or how is not known, this Imperial Prince vanished from the Yamana camp and from history alike.

Kyoto had long before this been reduced to little better than a heap of ruins; and the hostile armies had mostly retired to strategic positions around it, where their efforts were mainly directed to cutting off the enemy’s supplies. In these operations there were scores, perhaps hundreds, of skirmishes; but nothing in the shape of a general, much less of a decisive, action. The struggle was now really being fought out in the provinces, where the rewards of victory were much more substantial than they were in the capital. For instance, the Shiba captain, Asakura, who had hitherto fought most gallantly on Shiba Yoshikado’s behalf, was seduced by the promise of his master’s province of Echizen, about 1471 or 1472. At once proceeding there, he speedily reduced his fellow vassals, the Kai and the Ninomiya; and established a new great feudal house of his own. This perhaps was one of the most conspicuous of many instances.

In Kyoto, where the contest had long before developed into a stalemate on a chessboard of blackened ruins, almost every one was getting tired or disgusted with the situation. The dearest wish of the two great opposing chiefs themselves for some time past had been for peace. But when they did endeavour to compose their differences they found that the war they had raised was a veritable Frankenstein whose vagaries they were powerless to control and who had them both at his mercy. Certain of their most influential confederates would have nothing to do with proposals of peace. Among these Akamatsu Masanori was the most important. During the war his partisans had at last recovered the old family provinces of Harima, Bizen, and Mimasaka from the Yamanas; and on reaching any accommodation with Hosokawa, the very first thing the Red Monk would do would be to hurry home and fall upon Akamatsu with every man he could muster. Accordingly the negotiations tame to nothing. So weary of the whole thing and so chagrined was Hosokawa that he threatened to enter the priesthood and retire from the world. The Red Monk, being a priest already, vowed that he would commit the happy dispatch.

However, release from the worries of their own raising was nearer at hand than they expected, for the Red Monk died on May 10, 1473, and Hosokawa on June 6 of the same year. Yet the wasting war continued to drag its weary length along until the winter of 1477. The position of the Yamana (or Yoshimi) faction had grown less and less secure owing to the fact that they were “rebels,” and that the Shogun stripped their leaders of their offices of Wingo. and, as in the case of Asakura in Echizen, assigned their provinces to subordinates who were expected to reduce them, or otherwise undermine their influence in their native seats. The consequence was that some surrendered, while others withdrew to retrieve their fortunes at home. At last Ouchi Masahiro arranged terms of accommodation for himself; and on the night of December 17,1477, the sky around Kyoto was ruddy with the glare of the blazing cantonments the Yamana men were abandoning. On the morrow it was found that they had vanished; and the long and disastrous struggle around Kyoto was at an end.

But elsewhere the war was by no means over. The Yamana leaders had actually arranged to resume operations in the capital as soon as they had settled things in their own provinces. But there things were not to be settled in a month or even in a year; and meanwhile Yoshimi, who had withdrawn with Toki into Mino, made peace with his brother the Shogun, and consequently there was no further pretext for the Yamana men to attack the capital.

But this simply meant that the war was now wholly transferred to the provinces; for the subordinate chiefs in the opposing camps had made no truce with each other. For example the old struggle in Yamato, Kii, and Kawachi between the Hatakeyamas, Masanaga, and Yoshinari was resumed, and ended only with the death of both of them in 1493. As for the great house of Shiba it found itself threatened with ruin. In Echizen it had been replaced by its former vassal, Asakura; in Owari, its great retainers the Odas had seized most of the province, while the raids of Imagawa, the Lord of Suruga, upon Totomi had left the Shibas but slender foothold there. It was not indeed until 1572 that the family disappeared from history; but during the last century of its existence it was nothing but a mere shadow of its former self. As regards the Yamanas, they had lost a good deal more than half their domains. In fact the only great chiefs who emerged from the struggle with, if not bettered, at least unimpaired fortunes were Akamatsu, Hosokawa, and Ouchi.

Meanwhile the Empire at large had been seething with armed strife and disorder, a good deal of which had no connection with the great War of Onin at all. In the very winter that saw the end of this struggle, a twenty-four years’ civil war in the Kwanto was brought to a temporary conclusion.

In the general doom of Ashikaga Mochiuji (1439) and his family (1440) only his five-year-old son, Shigeuji, had escaped. For the next ten years Kamakura remained in the hands of the Uyesugis; but in 1449 this Ashikaga Shigeuji was appointed Kwanto Kwanryo, with Uyesugi Noritada as his Shitsuji. Now this Noritada was the son of the man who had been responsible for the death of Shigeuji’s father and brothers, and Shigeuji’s mind kept brooding on thoughts of revenge. Besides this, Noritada sent reports of Shigeuji’s conduct to Kyoto, where he was beginning to be distrusted; and this fact served to intensify Shigeuji’s hatred. In 1454 Shigeuji sent Yuki and Satomi, his confederates, to invest Noritada’s mansion and put him out of the way. The murder of their chief at once drove all the Uyesugis to arms; Shigeuji was hunted from Kamakura, and Noritada’s son Fusaaki was then made Kwanryo. After five years’ fighting Fusaaki asked the Kyoto Shogun to send down his brother Ashikaga Masatomo as Kwanto Kwanryo. But Shigeuji, who had established himself at Koga in Shimosa, received the support of the great families of Chiba, Yuki, Oyama, Utsunomiya, Nasu, Satomi, Satake, and Oda; and although Masatomo was backed by the Uyesugis and the men of Kai and Izu, he never was able to install himself in Kamakura and had to rest content with establishing his court at Horikoshi in Izu. The war between the rival Kwanto Kwanryos of Koga and Horikoshi went on until 1478, when the Shogun Yoshimasa induced Shigeuji to abandon the contest and return to Kyoto.

Echigo, being a Uyesugi province, was deeply involved in these Kwanto disturbances. Kaga, which had been partitioned between the two branches of the Togashi family, and in which the two rival branches of the Monto (or True Jodo) Sect had acquired many manors, had been convulsed since 1474 by a struggle between one branch of the Togashi house, allied with one branch of the Monto Sect, against the other Togashi sept, supported by the other Monto faction. Shinano, Suruga, and Mikawa each had local contests of their own. Kyushu was almost in as evil a plight. At the southern end of the island, the Shimadzu and the Ito families were at war; in Higo the Sagaras were slaughtering the Nawas, and the Kikuchis were fighting out a succession quarrel among themselves, while in the north the Otomos and Shoni, who had again come back from Tsushima, were raiding Ouchi’s domains.

And yet all this was merely the prologue to the piece, for it is the period between 1490 and 1600 that is known in Japanese history as the Sengoku Jidai, or “Epoch of the Warring Country”

Before the outbreak of the War of Onin in 1467 the control of the central administration over the provinces had already become feeble. One result of that cataclysm was to destroy it utterly. Imperial Decrees and Instructions from the Shogun had come to be alike disregarded with impunity, and it was presently recognised that it was futile to issue them. The peasant, the craftsman, the trader, and the traveller were still taxed as before; but, outside of Kyoto and the single province of Yamashiro, scarcely a cent of all this revenue was now paid into the coffers of the Shogun. This meant that the great mili­tary families had made themselves independent. In the follow­ing century we find the early missionaries speaking of mere local chiefs as “Kings,”—the “King” of Bungo, the “King ” of Satsuma, the “King’’ of Hirado, of Arima, and Omura, and so on. As a matter of fact, although technically at fault, the worthy Jesuit Fathers were practically correct in their terminology, for within his domains even the pettiest of these potentates was possessed of virtual regal powers. It is true that they did not coin money; for no money was coined in Japan at that date, nor had been coined in it for centuries, the country being almost entirely dependent upon China for supplies of a metallic medium of circulation. But, while imposing what taxes they themselves chose upon their subjects, they paid no tax, not even “feudal aids,” to any superior. They exercised not merely “original” but unlimited judicature within their domains; while the laws enforced there were all of their own making. And they declared war and made peace without invoking any one’s permission; and when they did by any chance profess to be acting in a Shogun’s name it was merely to serve special temporary purposes of their own. Then on their own sole initiative they bestowed lands or revenues upon their retainers, who had to render military service in return; and the greatest of these vassals had their sub-feudatories, who had to take the field with their personal following when occasion arose. In short, we are at last face to face with a fully developed Feudal System.

In Kamakura days we had to deal with manors, rarely exceeding 500 acres of good rice-land in extent. Besides, at that epoch, only a proportion of these manors were held by military service. A large, perhaps an equal, number were held by civilians,—Imperial Princes, great Court nobles, and the like. Besides these the wide estates of temples and shrines were ordinarily exempt from the attentions of the Kamakura Shugo and Jito, while a certain portion of the soil of the country was not manorial property at all, and paid its dues directly to the Civilian Governor or his staff appointed by the Imperial Court. The manorial system still lingers on; but the manors now become integral portions of great fiefs. The military leaders now seize every acre of ground they can lay hold on. The Imperial Household domains, the estates of the Imperial Princes and of the Court nobles, are all ‘‘swallowed up,” to use the expressive Japanese phrase, while everywhere save in a few quarters where he lingers on as an anachronistic curiosity, the civilian Provincial Governor vanishes, there being not a rood of ground left for him to govern, or a single sheaf of rice to collect as a tax. The only non-military manors that survive are those of the Shrines and Temples, for the warrior class had generally a salutary dread of the wrath of the gods, and a superstitious reverence for the three sacred things, Buddha, the Law, and the Priesthood. Even these ecclesiastical manors assume, or rather resume, a warlike appearance; and we shall presently find the Monto Chief Priest figuring as a great military potentate in possession of the whole province of Kaga, and with many estates and numerous throngs of mailed vassals in other quarters of the Empire.

One great immediate cause of the breakdown of the Ashikaga Shogunate was the incapacity of Yoshimasa as a ruler. The work of administration was as distasteful to him as it had been to Yoritomo’s son Yoriiye in Kamakura; but whereas Yoriiye had been a robust and strong-thewed roysterer, Yoshimasa’s sensuality was of the soft and passively self-indulgent kind. Intellectually torpid he was not, but he possessed little or nothing of his grandfather Yoshimitsu’s faculty of concentrating his attention upon objects that demanded any considerable mental strain. From first to last he was an aesthete and a dilettante. From the single fact that art, and especially pictorial art, was one of his chief interests, and that he patronised artists in a princely way he has been called a Japanese Medici. But this is doing a serious wrong to the great rulers of Florence, for of their vigorous and robust qualities, their power of work, their many-sided ability Yoshimasa had nothing. He had all Yoshimitsu’s craze for pomp and magnificence, and more,—and although the financial position of the State was now as desperate as it had been sound in Yoshimitsu’s time, Yoshimasa would persist in aping his grandfather’s extravagances. Immediately after the War of Onin he set to work to immortalise himself by the erection of the Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) as a fellow or rival to the Kinkakuji, while he was also responsible for other structures, all magnificent, but all unnecessary or worse at the time. In his Ginkakuji, he gave his “Cha-no-yu” parties, his “ Incense-Comparing” parties, his “Poem-Comparing” parties,—refined frivolities innocent enough as mere pastimes perhaps, but not so innocent when they became the main interest of the man responsible for the administration of a great Empire, which was proceeding swiftly along the downward path to disintegration, if not actually to ruin. And harmless too, perhaps, compared with the drinking bouts and foul debauchery in which His Highness habitually indulged. In the midst of one of the greatest battles in 1467, Yoshimasa had held high revel in his Palace. Like Nero he evidently enjoyed the spectacle of “the earth being mixed with fire” in his lifetime.

There were something like forty Court dames all struggling for a share of the Shogun’s favour, and many of these became rich thanks to the presents they received from the Lords who made them their medium of approaching His Highness with their requests for office or other petitions. But the usual avenue to his ear was through Ise Sadachika or Hino, the younger brother of the Lady Tomi. The itching of Hino’s palm was constant and unappeasable—and at a time when the other Court nobles had sunk into such abject destitution that many of them could not appear at the rare Court functions still held because their robes had been sold or pawned, Hino continued to amass fabulous wealth. Nor was the Lady Tomi a whit less rapacious than her younger brother. Yoshimasa’s indolence threw many details of the administration into her hands; and at last she came to intermeddle in most affairs. Barriers had been erected at the seven great entrances to Kyoto where transit dues were levied; but on the outbreak of the War of Onin the mob had thrown these down. Now, on pretext of contributing funds for the re-erection of the Imperial Palace the Lady Tomi had the barriers restored and very heavy tolls exacted at them. But not a penny of the money thus collected was devoted to the purpose for which it was professedly intended; it all went into the Lady Tomi’s bottomless privy purse. At last the city mob rose, overthrew the barriers, and took to indiscriminate plundering and burning. The troops sent by the Daimyo to quell the riot were beaten off and Kyoto was at the mercy of a famished and infuriated rabble. The disturbance was only allayed by the proclamation of a Tokusei. This special émeute was a truly popular movement; but many of the Tokusei disturbances were not so, being incited by Samurai, many of whom their notorious gambling propensities and general debauchery had reduced to beggary. In the course of the great war Nara suffered greatly from an outbreak of this nature. Presently the cry of “Equalisation of Property” spread to far distant provinces; and we find Ouchi and others having to deal with Socialistic disturbances in their own domains.

Yoshimasa had nominally resigned in favour of his son Yoshihisa, then nine years old, in 1474,—a step that threw more and more power into the grasping hands of the Lady Tomi, the Ashikaga Agrippina. As Yoshihisa grew to manhood he showed himself possessed of a penetrating intelligence, a strong will, and a fondness for hard work. This greatly disconcerted his mother; and the Lady Tomi thereupon began, only with too much success, to encourage in her own son that fondness for wine and women for which the Ashikagas were traditionally notorious. Yoshihisa’s physical constitution was not robust; and his sensual excesses cost him his life at the early age of twenty-five. And yet he died in camp in the middle of a vigorously conducted and victorious campaign. Under happier auspices this unfortunate Yoshihisa might possibly have become the greatest of his stock.

He seems to have been able to analyse the causes of the decay of his house tolerably correctly, and had set to work with vigour to repair the errors of the past. One of the first things to be done was to curb the insolence and repress the aggressions of the great military chiefs. In 1487 or 1488, some forty-six landowners in Omi had appealed against the Shugo, Sasaki Takayori, who had seized their estates, and had all but “swallowed up” the whole of the province. The Sasakis were originally of Uda-Genji stock; but on the adoption of Sasaki Hideyoshi by Minamoto Tameyoshi in 1125 the family had become a Seiwa-Genji house. Under Yoritomo some half-dozen Sasakis had distinguished themselves as able captains and intrepid soldiers; and in his days or a little later we find Sasaki acting as Shugo in Aki, Iwami, Izumo and Omi. Omi remained the chief seat of the house, which in the fourteenth century parted into the branches of Rokkaku and Kyogoku. As usual in such cases, no great love was lost between these consanguineous septs; and in the great War of Onin they had fought on opposite sides. In Omi they were now at bitter feud with each other, and this afforded the young Shogun his opportunity. In 1488 several of the other great Daimyo responded to his summons; and Sasaki had been all but crushed, when Yoshihisa suddenly died in camp.

As Yoshihisa was childless, Yoshimasa now adopted Yoshimi’s son, Yoshitane, then twenty-five years of age, and made him Shogun. About 1491 or 1492 operations against Sasaki, who meanwhile had retrieved his position, were resumed; and Omi was again overrun by the loyal Daimyo, Sasaki having to escape for his life. The Kwanryo at this time was that Hatakeyama Masanaga, who had held the post just before the outbreak of the War of Onin. This was his fourth term of service in an office which he occupied for a total of some one- and-twenty years. He was the only one of the leaders in the Great War that survived; and his long experience of affairs gave him a great ascendancy. Unfortunately his arrogance and haughtiness made him very offensive to the great Daimyo who had served under him in the Omi campaign,—especially to Hosokawa’s son, Masamoto, who, by the way, had already acted as Kwanryo for a brief season on two occasions.

As has been said, Hatakeyama Masanaga had been carrying on a private war against the rival branch of the house for years; and he now prevailed upon the Shogun to declare this war a national one, and to throw the troops that had been employed in the Omi campaign against Kawachi and Kii. The rival Hatakeyama chief thereupon appealed to the monks of the Hofukuji and to Sasaki, who at once joined him, while he also came to an understanding with Hosokawa Masamoto then in Kyoto. As soon as Masanaga and the Shogun entered Kawachi, Hosokawa rose and seized the capital, and then marched swiftly after them. Taken completely by surprise Masanaga committed suicide, while the Shogun fled north to Etchu.

Hosokawa thereupon (1493) set up a new Shogun in the person of Yoshizumi, the son of that brother of Yoshimasa’s, Masatomo, who had been nominal Kwanryo of the Kwanto since 1461. With the exception of the thirteen years between 1508 and 1521, the Ashikaga Shoguns were henceforth destined to be nothing better than puppets in the hands of the Hosokawas or of the Hosokawa vassals, who were presently to overthrow and supplant that great bouse.

Hosokawa Masamoto was Kwanryo from 1494 to 1507; and during that time he exerted himself to reduce the provinces around Kyoto and to place vassals of his own in them as Shugo-dai,—or Deputy-Shugo. Some of these Deputies presently acquired so much strength as to be a menace to their master. His continued residence in Kyoto made it necessary for Masamoto to entrust the administration of his Shikoku domains to his great vassals Miyoshi Nagateru and Kosai Motochika, who presently became deadly rivals.

Now, Hosokawa Masamoto was devoted to magic arts, and to attain proficiency in these it was believed that sexual continence was absolutely indispensable. Hence Masamoto was childless; and so he adopted a son of the Court noble Kujo and also a collateral relative of his own. The former, known as Sumiyuki, was entrusted to the care of Kosai, while the latter, Sumimoto, had Miyoshi for his guardian. In 1507, Kosai, fearing that Sumimoto was to be declared heir, caused Hosokawa Masamoto to be assassinated in Kyoto; and then at once set up Sumiyuki as chief of the house. This brought up Miyoshi with an army from Shikoku; and in the fighting that ensued Kosai and his protégé perished. Sumimoto was then made head of the great clan, and Kwanryo as well. As he was only eleven years of age, of course it was Miyoshi who was the master of the situation.

But just at this point things took a new turn. The former Shogun had by no means abandoned his claims. In 1499 he had come down from the Hokurikudo with a strong army and had been admitted into Hi-ei-zan. Here he was assailed and routed by Hosokawa Masamoto, who burned all the priests’ quarters to the ground. However, the ex-Shogun made good his escape; and after various vicissitudes at last reached Yamaguchi, where he was accorded safe asylum by Ouchi Yoshioki. In 1508, Ouchi, on learning of recent events in Kyoto, mustered a great force and marched upon the capital, whence the Shogun Yoshizumi had to flee to Omi, while Yoshitane was restored to office, and Ouchi appointed Deputy-Kwanryo.

Hosokawa Masamoto had adopted a third son, known as Hosokawa Takakuni; and this son also aspired to the positions of head of the house and of Kwanryo. Failing to realise his ambitions he had thrown in his lot with Yoshitane and Ouchi; and he now became the most influential personage in the capital. Although the struggle was ostensibly between rival Shoguns, it was at bottom a contest between the Hosokawas,— Takakuni and Sumimoto, the latter being a puppet of Miyoshi’s. The Sumimoto faction presently made a successful effort to recover the capital, whence Yoshitane and Ouchi withdrew into Tamba to muster fresh troops. In the battle of Funaoka-yama Ouchi and Yoshitane gained a decisive success, and Kyoto again fell into their hands (1511). So long as Ouchi remained in the capital Yoshitane’s position as well as that of Takakuni was secure. But in 1518 troubles in his own provinces claimed Ouchi’s presence there; besides he had really been the main financial support of the Emperor and the Shogun for the last ten years, and this generosity had impoverished and crippled him so seriously that a season of retrenchment was imperatively necessary.

By 1520 Hosokawa Takakuni was carrying things with such a high hand that the Shogun began to find the situation impossible; and when Miyoshi reappeared at the head of a strong force and drove Takakuni from the capital, Yoshitane at once recognised his rival Sumimoto as head of the house of Hosokawa. Meanwhile Takakuni, supported by Sasaki, had raised an army of 40,000 men; and against these Miyoshi with only 3,000 troops could make no head; and finding his flight cut off he retired to the temple of Chionin and there committed harakiri. When Sumimoto died a few months later on in Awa, Takakuni attained his plenitude of power. In 1521 Yoshitane had to flee to Awaji, and Takakuni then set up the eleven-year-old son of Yoshizumi as Shogun. In 1528 Yoshiharu, as this twelfth Shogun was called, was driven from the capital by Miyoshi Nagamoto and had then to spend four years in Omi. In 1539 he was compelled to flee before another Miyoshi,—Chokei,—into Yamato, where he lurked for three years. In 1545 he resigned; but even then his troubles were not at an end, for in the next year he was again constrained to seek asylum in Omi, where he died in 1550.

Thus within forty years three successive Ashikaga Shoguns, —the 10th, 11th, and 12th—had died in exile. A similar fate was in store for the fourteenth and the fifteenth, the last of the line, while the thirteenth, Yoshiteru, had to commit harakiri in his own blazing palace (1565).

As for the Hosokawas, they failed to outlive their puppets. In 1527 Takakuni was driven from Kyoto by Miyoshi Nagamoto, who had espoused the cause of Sumimoto’s eight-year-old son, Harumoto. Takakuni did indeed retrieve his position on this occasion; but in 1531 he was again attacked and he was then defeated and slain in his flight. Harumoto, the last Hosokawa Kwanryo, was overthrown by his vassals Miyoshi and Matsunaga in 1558, and died a prisoner in their hands in 1563. And a few years later Miyoshi and Matsunaga alike were to go down before the might of Nobunaga of the house of Oda which had risen on the ruins of its suzerains, the Shiba.

During all this time the Kwanto, so far as any interference by Kyoto in its affairs was concerned, might well be considered a foreign country. It simply went its own way, solely occupied with its own domestic problems and with its attention wholly engrossed by its long and monotonous tale of intrigue, aggression, battle, murder, and sudden death in various forms. There was one Ashikaga Shogun, or, as he was popularly termed, Kubo, with his court at Koga in Shimosa, exercising a precarious superiority over some half-score or dozen of great houses in Awa, Kadzusa, Shimosa, and Shimotsuke, and another with his seat at Horikoshi in Izu with authority over little more than that single province. The greatest power in the Kwanto was really the Uyesugi family, which, as has been said, had parted into the three branches of Inukake, Yamanouchi, and Ogigayatsu. The first had become extinct with the Shitsuji, Noritomo, who fell a victim to the great plague of 1461. When Fusaaki, the bead of the Yamanouchi sept, died in 1466 he left only a daughter behind him; and a husband for her was provided in the person of Akisada of the Ogigayatsu stock, who now became the head of the Yamanouchi house. Akisada had owed his advancement to Nagao Masakata, one of the eight great Uyesugi vassals, and on the death of this Masakata, Akisada mortally offended his son, Kageharu, by depriving him of the succession in favour of another Nagao. Kageharu thereupon transferred his services to the Ogigayatsu branch, and in 1477 raised an army and attacked his former overlord. This civil war went on until 1486, when a, truce was patched up. But in 1493 it broke out again, and continued to rage till 1505, when the two families were constrained to sink their differences and unite to maintain their existence, now threatened by a new power which had found its opportunity in their dissensions. This new power was the second house of Hojo,—that of Odawara.

About 1490, the Ashikaga Shogun of Horikoshi, Masatomo, with the view of securing the succession to his favourite younger son, Yoshizumi, had ordered his eldest son, Cha-cha, to enter the priesthood. In 1491 Cha-cha assassinated his father and assumed his office. The crime excited profound indignation, whether real or simulated; and a retainer of Imagawa, the Lord of Suruga, took upon himself the duty of punishing it.

This retainer, Ise Shinkuro by name, marched against the patricide Cha-cha, overthrew him and put him to death, and then—coolly established himself at Nirayama as Lord of Izu! His next step was to interfere in the Uyesugi quarrel. The head­quarters of the Yamanouchi branch were in Sagami, which is contiguous with Izu, and Ise offered his services to the other, the Ogigayatsu branch, which held the comparatively remote provinces of Echigo and Kodzuke. Passing into Sagami he seized Odawara (1495); and at once proceeded to raise a castle there and to seize the adjoining country, just as he had already “swallowed up” Izu. In 1505, the Uyesugis, as has been said, awoke to a full sense of their folly and united their forces for a common effort against this interloping land-thief. But soon after, Nagao Tamekage, the chief Echigo vassal of the house of Ogigayatsu, ventured to remonstrate with his Lord about the laxity of his administration, and this so irritated the latter that he endeavoured to put Nagao out of the way. In the lighting that ensued many of Nagao’s fellow-vassals espoused his cause; and their Lord was defeated and slain in 1509. This brought the Yamanouchi chieftain, Akisada, into Echigo; but he also was defeated and killed (1510). A section of Nagao’s fellow-vassals now banded themselves together to avenge the death of the suzerain; and between these factions of Ogigayatsu retainers war raged in Echigo down to 1538. This meant that the Yamanouchi house was practically left alone to deal with the land-thief of Odawara. Long before this the latter had married his son to a female descendant of the Hojos, had then assumed the name of Hojo, and having taken the tonsure and the priestly name of Soun, was now known as Hojo Soun. With the death of Miura Yoshiatsu and the cap­ture of his castle of Arai in 1518, the whole of Sagami passed into the hands of the great land-thief, who died in the following year at the patriarchal age of eighty-seven.

Hojo Soun’s son, Ujitsuna (1487-1541), seized the Uyesugi strongholds of Yedo (1524) and Kawagoye (1538); routed and killed the Koga Shogun Yoshiaki (1539), and at the same time secured the submission of the Satomis of Awa, and thus reduced the whole of the Kwanto to his rule. Both he and his father had worked hard to establish a sound and just administration in the wide domains they had so unblushingly purloined; and Samurai flocked to them from the Home Provinces, from Shikoku, and from other equally disturbed parts of the Empire.

The Ogigayatsu branch of the house of Uyesugi became extinct in 1544, while that of Yamanouchi was really perpetuated by the Nagaos, Tamekage’s third son, the famous Kenshin, having been adopted as heir in 1551. Henceforth the seat of the Yamanouchi-Uyesugi power was not Kamakura, but Echigo.

The story of the rise of the later Hojos is a striking example of the fashion in which new feudal houses were now displacing many of those hitherto most prominent in the annals of the nation. In Mino, the old house of Toki was presently destined to succumb to that of Saito, the founder of which had been first a priest and then an oil merchant, and who began his career as a military man by assassinating the Samurai who had adopted him. In northern Omi, the Asai had made themselves independent of their suzerains, the Sasakis. Meanwhile a hitherto obscure offshoot of the Sasakis, the Amako, had established themselves as Lords of Idzumo, and were pushing their conquests into the provinces to the south, where among others they came into collision with the Ouchi, with whom at times they carried on a by no means unequal strife. The great house of Akamatsu, racked and riven by a series of succession disputes, was now confined to a precarious hold over the single province of Harima, several of its former great vassals having thrown off their allegiance and established themselves as independent chieftains. In Kyushu, the Shoni and the Kikuchi alike disappear; while in Shikoku, Chosokabe, a hitherto obscure vassal of the Hosokawas and the Miyoshis, is now rising to greatness on the ruin of his overlords. In Kaga, the Togashi go down before the militant Mon to monks. The old Minamoto houses of Shiba, Hatakeyama, Yamana, Hosokawa, Isshiki have all either hopelessly fallen from their previous high estate, or are engaged in a final despairing struggle for existence.

The old houses that continue to survive with unjeopardised fortunes can easily be counted. Among such are the Daté and Ashina in Mutsu, the Satake in Hitachi, the Takeda in Kai, the Imagawa in Suruga, the (Yamanouchi) Uyesugi in Echigo, and the Ouchi in the six provinces around Yamaguchi. In Kyushu we still find the Shimadzu, the Ito, the Aso, and the Otomo, while in Shikoku the Kono still retain something of their former power.

Sandwiched in between the great families were many scores, perhaps some two hundred of smaller ones, all strenuously engaged in land-thieving,—a species of larceny then highly respectable. The position of these was naturally very precarious; at any time they might be “swallowed up” by a neighbouring great house, or even overthrown by some small clan with which they happened to be at feud. Hence a tendency to “commend” themselves to the nearest great house then in the ascendant. Their bonds of allegiance generally lay very lightly upon them, however; often at the slightest pros­pect of advantage they would either shake it off. or transfer it elsewhere. Then, they no less than the great houses were frequently convulsed by succession disputes and other domestic quarrels. Sometimes, as in the case of the later Hojo, the chief­tain was truly the head of the clan, a veritable king and leader of men within the domains he had either inherited or stolen. As a rule it was only clans with such heads that were able to extend their frontiers at the expense of their neigh­bours, or even to survive. But often the real power lay with one or other or several of the great sub-feudatories, and these were frequently jealous of each other’s influence in the counsels of their common master, and were generally on the outlook for an opportunity to trip each other up. A disputed succession to the headship of the fief was nearly always the occasion of a local civil war, by which, of course, neighbours were prompt to profit. Sometimes too the fortunes of a great house depended upon the astuteness of some exceptionably able retainer; and in such a case the baseness of the trickery and fraud to which hostile clans would resort to bring this retainer under his lord’s suspicion, and so effect his fall and the subsequent ruin of the house whose main support he was, makes one blush for human nature.

The country was now in an interminable turmoil of war; but by “war” a great deal more was meant than the mere ordering of campaigns and the handling of troops on the battlefield. It was “war” conducted on the principles expounded in such Chinese manuals as Sonshi’s. These works were now in the hands of nearly every one of the few that could peruse them; at night a professor—sometimes a Chinaman—would be set to read them aloud to the Samurai gathered in the castle-hall to hear him. In these Chinese analogues of Jomini and Clausewitz, what was chiefly expounded was not so much the principles of war as the dirtiest form of statecraft with its unspeakable depths of duplicity. The most cynical, the very worst passages in the notorious Eighteenth Chapter of a “The Prince”, pale before the naked and full-bodied depravity of the old Chinese lore on espionage. Sonshi’s section on spies is truly abominable and revolting; yet this special section must be carefully conned by any one who wishes to understand the fashion in which “war” was waged in Japan at this time. Tn most respects the standard of public morality in the Empire was perhaps lower than it was in contemporary Italy, the only marked difference in favour of Japan being the comparative rarity, if not total absence, of cases of poisoning.

Yet vile as this age may seem to be, it was not without great redeeming features. It was only the strong and vigorous ruler that could hope to survive; and this had the effect of opening up careers to obscure men of ability, whose services a few centuries before would have been totally lost to the nation. Unsupported by capable sub-feudatories and subordinate officers, the great chieftain was now inevitably doomed. Hence the unceasing exertions of men like the Odawara Hojos to attract Samurai from other fiefs to their flag. Furthermore, without material resources no large following could be maintained; and hence the strenuous efforts made by intelligent chiefs to establish a sound and just financial and judicial administration within their domains. It now became perilous to regard the farmers as mere slaves; harsh treatment would surely drive them across the border into some neighbouring fief, where they would be eagerly welcomed and set to work to convert waste lands into fruitful rice-fields; while in an era when fighting-men were in so much request, able-bodied peasants who absconded could readily count on finding service under some hostile standard. In the great War of Onin we begin to hear of bodies of Ashigaru being employed. These bore the same relation to the heavy-panoplied Samurai that the peltasts of Iphicrates did to the hoplites of his age. For a peasant to procure the not very costly equipment of an Ashigaru was comparatively easy; and once possessed of arms he readily found employment as a soldier.

Thus the attainment of any lasting success in the warfare of the time demanded the exercise of high practical ability, not in one, but in multifarious directions,—at the council-board, on the judgement seat, in the fiscal and financial administra­tion of the fief. The best intellect of the nation, no longer doomed to stagnation and a death like torpidity as it had been in the tenth and eleventh centuries under the Fujiwaras, was now thoroughly awake and vigorously at work. No doubt it was entirely concentrated on the pressing practical problems of the moment. But exercise on These work-a-day problems did more to develop the native vigour of the national mind at large than the practise of versification, whether in Japanese or Chinese, or the poring over glosses on Confucius or Mencius had ever effected for it. The fruit of this was to be seen in the last three decades of the sixteenth century, which produced a roll of illustrious names of constructive ability such as Japan had never seen before, and has never seen since.

The political condition of early sixteenth-century Japan bore a not remote resemblance to that of contemporary Germany, minus the Free Cities. In both countries the central power had entirely broken down. In 1495 Maximilian told his Diet that “the Empire was as a heavy burden with little gain therefrom”; and at the Diet of Speyer Granvella asserted that “for the support of His Majesty’s dignity not a hazelnut’s worth of profit came from the Empire.” The Japanese Sovereign was in infinitely worse case than these Holy Roman Emperors, for unlike them he had no external resources to depend on. The situation cannot be better set forth than in the words of an annalist who wrote some few years later. Says he:—

“After the War of Onin (14674477) the Samurai abandoned the capital, and went back to the provinces. The hey-day of the Imperial city was over. The Dairi was rebuilt, but on a greatly reduced scale, and the Shogun Yoshimasa reared some fine structures. But in the Kyoroku period (1528-1532) the war again became fierce; and temples, palaces, and mansions went up in flames, while the citizens fled for their lives to remote places.

“The Dairi was a roughly built structure. It was without earthen walls, and was surrounded by nothing but a bamboo fence. Common people made tea, and sold it in the garden of the Palace, under the very shadow of the Cherry of the Right and the Orange of the Left. Children made it their playground. By the sides of the main approach to the Imperial pavilion they modelled mud toys; sometimes they peeped behind the blind that screened the Imperial apartments. The Sovereign himself lived chiefly on money gained by selling his autographs. The meanest citizen might deposit a few coins with a written request such as,—I wish such and such a verse from the Hundred Poets,—or a copy of this or that section of the Ise Tales. After some days the commission was sure to be executed. At night the dim light of the room where the Palace Ladies lodged could be seen from Sanjo Bridge. So miserable and lowly had everything become.”

It is significant that between 1465 and 1585 there was no case of an Emperor’s abdication; and that during that period the succession in each case passed from sire to son without occasioning any dispute! One reason for this was that the Throne as an Institution had ceased to be of any practical importance, and another was that although the Sovereigns often wished to abdicate there were no funds available to defray the expenses of the indispensable attendant ceremony. During the War of Onin, as the result of which the Emperor had to spend some thirteen years within the narrow confines of the Bakufu buildings in Muromachi, all the Court functions were abandoned; and when they were resumed they were Ryaku-Shiki, or Abridged Ceremonies only. The reason, of course, was the utter lack of funds, which at last came to be so extreme that on the death of Tsuchimikado II in 1500, it was 44 days before

enough could be collected to defray the expenses of his obsequies, while Nara II., who became Emperor in that year, was in no position to celebrate his coronation until 1521.

The following table completes the Met of Sovereigns within our period:—

103. Tsuchimikado II, born 1442; succeeded 1465; died 1500.

104. Kashiwabara II, born 1464; succeeded 1500; died 1526,

105. Nara II, born 1496; succeeded 1526; died 1557.

106. Ogimachi, born 1517; succeeded 1557.

It may indeed seem extraordinary to find that an era of such unceasing turmoil and of such chronic misery and destitution should have been the golden age of Japanese pictorial art. The explanation is really very simple, however. The great patrons of painting from before the days of the renowned Rose no Kanoka (later ninth century) down to the outbreak of the Succession War in 1337 had been the Imperial Court, which had done much to foster the native Japanese schools,—the Yamato.ryu and the Tosa-ryu. As a consequence of the great civil strife of 1337 to 1392 the Court was greatly impoverished; and the third Ashikaga Shogun, Yoshimitsu, then assumed the r61e of a Japanese Medici. In this he was emulated by his grandson, Yoshimasa, who, although said at one time to have been actually driven to pawn his armour to raise money to defray the expenses of the accouchement of his consort, yet lavished fabulous sums upon the indulgement of his artistic fancies. The older schools were not neglected; but it was the new school whose work was based on Chinese traditions of the Sung and Mongol dynasties that chiefly profited by Ashikaga munificence. Most of the artists of this new school were Zen priests; in fact the great academy of the age was that Zen monastery of Sokokuji, for the possession of which one of the first great battles of the War of Onin was fought, to be followed by a still fiercer one for the recapture of its ruins. It had been founded by Yoshimitsu in 1383 as a mortuary temple for the Ashikaga Shoguns, had become the headquarters of the ten Rinzai Zen sects, and had waxed fabulously wealthy. Here Josetsu taught; and under him studied Sesshu, Shubun, and Rano Masanobu “the founders of the three new academies which were to apotheosise in Japan the works of the great Chinese masters of the Sung and Yuen dynasties.” All these and most of the other great artists of the age took the tonsure; and as even in the general anarchy that followed the collapse of the Ashikaga power the monasteries and their possessions were left comparatively undisturbed, these great priest painters were always assured of tranquillity and an honourable subsistence. Besides, among the great feudal potentates the Ouchi of Yamaguchi were not the only ones inclined to play the role of Mecenas.

It has just been said that in Japan there were no Free Cities. To this assertion there is one single exception. In the disorders of the civil war between the Hatakevamas, the people of Sakai dug a moat and threw up walls around their town; and hiring a military force of their own to protect them, constituted themselves into a sort of commercial republic. Later, in 1502, Villela tells us that 11 the city of Sakai is very extensive, exceedingly thronged with many rich merchants, and governed by its own laws and customs in the fashion of Venice. From other sources we know that there were not a few Samurai among these traders. The merchant in Japan was generally regarded with contempt, and in the social scale he was placed at the bottom, below the farmer and the artisan. The consequence was that trade was forced into the hands of a class of men who would not be likely to exhibit the possession of any very high sense of integrity and honour. At the present day Japan is paying a very severe penalty for this. Now, the continued existence of Sakai, and of a few autonomous commercial cities like it, would have done much to elevate the position of the merchant in the national estimation; and an unwritten code of commercial morality might well have been evolved as strict as that which has earned for the Chinese trader the confidence and respect of Europeans.

It is well to remember that if Japan had no Free Cities, she had what either Germany, or indeed any other European country, had not,—a single great city with a population of half- a-million. Such Kyoto was even at one of the lowest ebbs in its prosperity, at the date of Xavier’s visit to it in 1551. In 1467, at the outbreak of the War of Onin, it contained 180,000 families or perhaps 900,000 souls. Few cities in contemporary Europe could boast of even a tenth part of that population.

Yet when in Kyoto, in 1551, Xavier was very soon forced to the conclusion that a the most powerful of the Lords then in Japan was the King of Yamaguchi ” (Ouchi). This was in the very middle of what Japanese historians call the Sengoku Jidai. During the first and longer half of the hundred and ten years between 1490 and 1600 the centrifugal forces were in the ascendant; and when the Apostle of the Indies was in the land the process of disintegration was still advancing apace. But in 1551 Nobunaga was seventeen, Hideyoshi fifteen, and Iyeyasu nine years of age, and the successive efforts of this great trio were destined to reunite the warring fragments of the Empire under a central sway as strong as that of Kamakura times and to impose the meed of a full quarter of a millennium of peace upon a people whose lust for war and slaughter appeared to be utterly beyond human control, But the work of these three illustrious men lies beyond the scope of the present volume; the story of what they accomplished, and how they accomplished it, has already been fully told in Murdoch and Yamagata’s History of Japan During the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse.