Ashikaga Shogunate (1336): Muromachi Japan and Two Courts

The Ashikaga shogunate, also called the Muromachi shogunate, was the warrior government founded by Ashikaga Takauji in 1336, after he broke with Emperor Go-Daigo and seized Kyoto. Takauji set up a rival emperor, issued a short code of government and was named shogun in 1338. His victory split Japan between a Northern Court in Kyoto and a Southern Court in the mountains of Yoshino, a conflict that lasted until 1392 and shaped Japanese politics for more than two centuries.

Background: from Kamakura to the Kenmu Restoration

For about 150 years Japan had been dominated by the Kamakura shogunate, a warrior government based in eastern Japan. In 1333 Emperor Go-Daigo, with the help of warriors who changed sides, destroyed it. Ashikaga Takauji, head of a distinguished branch of the Minamoto clan, played a central role by capturing the shogunate’s offices in Kyoto.

Go-Daigo’s attempt to rule directly, the Kenmu Restoration, soon disappointed many warriors. In 1335 Takauji marched east to crush a revolt in Kamakura and then refused to return to court. The emperor branded him a rebel, and the two former allies went to war.

The campaigns of 1336

Takauji’s first advance on Kyoto in early 1336 was beaten back by loyalist armies, and he retreated to Kyushu in the far south-west. He regained strength quickly. He won a victory at Tatarahama near modern Fukuoka in the spring, gathered western warriors to his side and obtained a decree from the retired emperor Kōgon of the rival imperial line, which gave his cause legitimacy.

In July 1336 Takauji’s army, moving east by land and sea, met the loyalists at Minatogawa, near modern Kobe. Nitta Yoshisada was forced back, and Kusunoki Masashige, Go-Daigo’s most famous commander, was surrounded and died. Takauji re-entered Kyoto and in the autumn placed Kōmyō, Kōgon’s younger brother, on the throne.

At the end of the year Takauji’s government issued the Kenmu Shikimoku, a document of 17 articles setting out the principles of the new regime. It advised frugality, the appointment of capable officials and fair justice, and it settled the question of the capital: the government would stay in Kyoto rather than return to Kamakura.

Two courts

Go-Daigo had at first come to terms with Takauji and handed over regalia, but he escaped from Kyoto at the turn of 1336 to 1337 and fled to Yoshino, south of Nara. He declared that the regalia he had surrendered were copies and that he remained the true emperor. From then on there were two imperial courts, the Northern Court in Kyoto and the Southern Court in Yoshino, a period Japanese historians call the Nanboku-chō, or “Northern and Southern Courts”.

In 1338 Kōmyō appointed Takauji seii taishōgun, “barbarian-subduing great general”, the title held by the Kamakura shoguns. The same year the Southern Court lost two of its best commanders, Kitabatake Akiie and Nitta Yoshisada, in battle. Go-Daigo died at Yoshino in 1339. To honour his spirit, Takauji founded the Zen temple of Tenryū-ji in Kyoto, with the monk Musō Soseki as its first abbot.

Civil war within the Ashikaga

The Southern Court was militarily weak, but it survived because the Ashikaga camp itself split. Takauji had shared power with his younger brother Tadayoshi, who ran the administration and courts, while Takauji commanded the warriors. Tadayoshi’s rivalry with Takauji’s chief deputy, Kō no Moronao, led to open war in 1350, known as the Kannō Disturbance.

The fighting was confused, with both factions at times allying with the Southern Court. Moronao was killed in 1351, and Tadayoshi died in 1352, reportedly poisoned on his brother’s orders. Southern forces even briefly occupied Kyoto several times in the 1350s. Takauji died in 1358, having founded a dynasty of shoguns but not a stable state.

Key people

• Ashikaga Takauji (1305–1358): founder and first shogun of the Ashikaga shogunate.
• Ashikaga Tadayoshi (1306–1352): Takauji’s brother and co-ruler, later his enemy.
• Emperor Go-Daigo (1288–1339): founder of the Southern Court at Yoshino.
• Emperor Kōmyō (1322–1380): the Northern Court emperor installed by Takauji in 1336.
• Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408): third shogun, who reunited the two courts in 1392.

Consequences: the Muromachi order

Under Takauji’s grandson, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, who became shogun in 1368, the shogunate reached its height. In 1378 Yoshimitsu built a grand residence, the Palace of Flowers, on Muromachi street in Kyoto, which later gave its name to the shogunate and the period. In 1392 he negotiated the end of the court schism: the Southern emperor Go-Kameyama returned to Kyoto and handed the regalia to the Northern emperor Go-Komatsu.

The Ashikaga relied on powerful provincial military governors, the shugo, many of them Ashikaga relatives, who gradually turned their offices into hereditary regional power. Kyoto became the centre of a brilliant culture that blended court, warrior and Zen traditions, seen in Noh theatre and the Golden Pavilion. But the balance between shogun and shugo was fragile, and after the Ōnin War of 1467 to 1477 Japan slid into the long civil wars of the Sengoku period. The last Ashikaga shogun was driven out of Kyoto by Oda Nobunaga in 1573.

Legacy

The split between the two courts produced one of the most important works of Japanese political thought. In 1339 Kitabatake Chikafusa, a leading noble of the Southern Court and father of Kitabatake Akiie, wrote the Jinnō Shōtōki (“Chronicle of the Direct Descent of Gods and Sovereigns”). It argued that the legitimate emperor was the one who held the three sacred regalia and ruled with virtue, and it defended the Southern line.

The question of which court had been legitimate became a political issue again in modern Japan. The present imperial family descends from the Northern line, yet in 1911, after a fierce public controversy, the Meiji government declared the Southern Court to have been the rightful one. For decades afterwards Ashikaga Takauji was taught in schools as a rebel against the emperor, while the Southern loyalists were celebrated as heroes.

Culturally, the Ashikaga era left a deep mark. The shoguns patronised Zen monasteries, ink painting, the tea ceremony and new styles of architecture and garden design. Yoshimitsu’s retirement villa, now the temple of Kinkaku-ji, and the later Silver Pavilion built by Ashikaga Yoshimasa remain among the best-known buildings in Japan. Yoshimitsu also reopened official relations with Ming China in the early 1400s, accepting the title “King of Japan” from the Ming emperor in return for valuable trade.

Many features of later Japanese culture that are now seen as traditional, such as tatami-floored rooms, alcoves for displaying art and flower arrangement, took shape in the households of Ashikaga-era warriors and monks.

Timeline

• 1333: The Kamakura shogunate falls.
• 1335: Takauji breaks with Go-Daigo.
• July 1336: Takauji wins the Battle of Minatogawa and takes Kyoto.
• Autumn 1336: Kōmyō is enthroned; the Kenmu Shikimoku is issued at the end of the year.
• Winter 1336–1337: Go-Daigo flees to Yoshino and founds the Southern Court.
• 1338: Takauji is appointed shogun.
• 1339: Go-Daigo dies; Takauji founds Tenryū-ji.
• 1350–1352: The Kannō Disturbance splits the Ashikaga camp.
• 1392: Yoshimitsu reunites the Northern and Southern Courts.
• 1573: Oda Nobunaga expels the last Ashikaga shogun from Kyoto.

Why it matters

The founding of the Ashikaga shogunate confirmed that warriors, not the emperor, would govern Japan, and moved the centre of warrior power to Kyoto. Its compromises, rivalries and dependence on regional lords set the stage for both the cultural flowering of the Muromachi period and the civil wars that followed.