Ashikaga Takauji

Ashikaga Takauji was the warrior who brought down one military government in Japan, turned against the emperor who had helped him do it, and founded another. Becoming shogun in 1338, he established the Ashikaga, or Muromachi, shogunate, but he also split the imperial house into two rival courts whose war outlived him. He has been ranked among the great villains of Japanese history, though his Zen adviser Musō Soseki praised his courage, mercy and generosity.

Takauji was born in 1305, his birthplace variously given as Kamakura, the Ashikaga lands in Shimotsuke province or a family estate near Kyoto. His clan descended in the male line from the Seiwa Genji branch of the Minamoto and took its name from the Ashikaga district, in modern Tochigi. The Kamakura shogunate he served was weakened: the long defence against the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281 had drained its finances and left warriors unrewarded and discontented, while real power lay with the Hōjō regents rather than the shoguns.

In 1331 Emperor Go-Daigo rose against the Hōjō, and in 1333 Takauji was sent to Kyoto to suppress the revolt. Instead he changed sides, joined the exiled emperor's supporters, among them Kusunoki Masashige, and took Kyoto. At the same time Nitta Yoshisada attacked Kamakura; when it fell, the regent Hōjō Takatoki and his clan killed themselves, ending the shogunate. Go-Daigo returned to the throne and launched the Kenmu Restoration, an attempt to rule directly as emperors had done centuries earlier.

Many samurai soon resented the new court, which seemed to ignore their interests, and looked to Takauji as their champion. He clashed with Go-Daigo's son Prince Moriyoshi, whom he had arrested and, in 1335, executed by his brother Ashikaga Tadayoshi. That year Takauji crushed a rising by Hōjō Takatoki's son, seized Kamakura, styled himself shogun and handed out land to his followers without the court's approval. Go-Daigo sent Nitta Yoshisada against him; Takauji beat Nitta and briefly took Kyoto in early 1336, but was driven out and fled west.

Takauji regrouped in Kyushu, where his victory at Tatarahama in 1336 won over many local warriors. He then advanced east by sea while Tadayoshi marched by land, and at the Battle of Minatogawa in 1336 they defeated Nitta and killed Kusunoki Masashige. Takauji took Kyoto and placed Emperor Kōmyō on the throne, while Go-Daigo fled south and maintained a rival court at Yoshino. So began the period of the Northern and Southern Courts, which lasted nearly sixty years. In 1338 Takauji was formally appointed shogun.

Takauji and Tadayoshi at first shared power, Takauji commanding the vassals and rewards, his brother running justice and administration. From 1349 their quarrel, known as the Kannō disturbance, tore the regime apart; Tadayoshi at one point went over to the Southern Court to fight his brother, and Kyoto changed hands repeatedly in the early 1350s. Tadayoshi died in 1352, leaving Takauji in sole control, but Southern forces, joined by defectors such as Tadayoshi's adopted son Tadafuyu, kept fighting.

Takauji died in Kyoto in 1358 and was succeeded by his son Ashikaga Yoshiakira. His grandson Ashikaga Yoshimitsu reunited the two courts in 1392. A decree of the Meiji era later declared the Southern line, which had held the imperial regalia, the legitimate one, and Confucian-minded historians condemned Takauji for disloyalty to the throne. The war epic Taiheiki tells the story of his rise.

Our 1300 map shows Japan under the Kamakura shogunate just before his rise, and our 1400 map shows it after the Ashikaga reunification of the courts.