Japanese History · Chronicle VI of XI
室町 · The Ashikaga Shoguns
The Ashikaga shoguns, Zen arts and the Ōnin War that opened Japan's age of warring states.
The Ashikaga ShogunatePolitical
Ashikaga Takauji sets up a new shogun in Kyoto, while the exiled Go-Daigo maintains a rival southern court.
Having turned against Go-Daigo, Takauji enthroned a compliant emperor and took the title of shogun, ruling from the Muromachi district of Kyoto. Go-Daigo fled south to Yoshino and proclaimed the true line, opening nearly sixty years of division between Northern and Southern Courts.
The Golden PavilionCultural
The shogun Yoshimitsu, having reunited the courts, builds the gold-leafed Kinkaku-ji and patronizes a brilliant culture.
The third Ashikaga shogun brought the Ashikaga to their height, ending the schism of the courts in 1392 and reopening rich trade with Ming China. His Golden Pavilion, shimmering above its pond, symbolized an age when the shoguns rivalled emperors as patrons of art, and Zen aesthetics permeated the court.
The Way of NohCultural
Under Yoshimitsu's patronage, the actor Zeami perfects Noh, Japan's austere and haunting classical drama.
Blending dance, chant, poetry and masks, Noh sought a serene, mysterious beauty its master Zeami called yūgen. His treatises on the actor's art are still studied today. Around the same ideals grew the tea ceremony, ink painting and rock gardens — a whole aesthetic of restraint, suggestion and Zen calm.
The Ōnin WarMilitary
A dispute over the shogunal succession erupts into a war that burns Kyoto and destroys central authority.
For eleven years rival coalitions of great lords fought through the streets of the capital, reducing much of Kyoto to ash. The shogunate never recovered its power. As the fighting spread to the provinces, Japan dissolved into a patchwork of warring domains — the beginning of the Sengoku, the age of the country at war.
The Europeans ArriveMilitary
Portuguese traders shipwrecked on Tanegashima introduce the matchlock gun, soon copied across warring Japan.
The first Europeans in Japan brought a weapon that would transform its wars. Japanese smiths reproduced the arquebus within a decade, and mass volleys of gunfire began to overturn the old cavalry tactics. Trade with the Portuguese also brought tobacco, bread and new words — the start of Japan's "Christian century."
The Christian CenturyReligious
The Jesuit Francis Xavier lands at Kagoshima, beginning Catholic missions that win many thousands of converts.
Xavier found the Japanese the "delight of his heart" and planted a mission that flourished, especially in Kyushu, where some lords converted partly to secure the Portuguese trade. Within decades there were hundreds of thousands of Japanese Christians — a community that would later face brutal suppression under the Tokugawa.
The End of the AshikagaPolitical
The warlord Oda Nobunaga drives the last Ashikaga shogun from Kyoto, ending the dynasty and opening the path to reunification.
By the mid-sixteenth century the Ashikaga were shoguns in name only. When Oda Nobunaga marched into Kyoto and then expelled Yoshiaki, the last of the line, the Muromachi shogunate simply ended. Out of the wreckage of the warring states, Nobunaga began the ruthless work of forging a single Japan.
