A history of the Japanese people

by F. Brinkley; Dairoku Kikuchi

DEATH OF CHIKAFUSA

Fate willed that while his enemies were thus triumphant, death should overtake the great statesman, strategist, and historian, Kitabatake Chikafusa. He died in 1354, at the age of sixty-two. Japanese annalists say of Chikafusa: "It was through his ability that the Southern forces were co-ordinated and kept active in all parts of the empire. It was due to his clever strategy that Kyoto lay under constant menace from the south. If the first great protagonists in the struggle between the Northern and the Southern Courts were Prince Morinaga and Takauji, and those of the next were Nitta Yoshisada and Takauji, the third couple was Kitabatake Chikafusa and Takauji." Chikafusa was of wide erudition; he had a wonderful memory, and his perpetual guides were justice and righteousness. After his death the Southern Court fell into a state of division against itself; and its spirit sensibly declined.

DEATH OF TAKAUJI

Takauji survived Chikafusa by only four years; he expired in 1358. Undoubtedly his figure is projected in very imposing dimensions on the pages of his country's history, and as the high mountain in the Chinese proverb is gilded by the sunbeams and beaten by the storm, so condemnation and eulogy have been poured upon his head by posterity. An annalist of his time says: "Yoritomo was impartial in bestowing rewards, but so severe in meting out punishments as to seem almost inhuman. Takauji, however, in addition to being humane and just, is strong-minded, for no peril ever summons terror to his eye or banishes the smile from his lip; merciful, for he knows no hatred and treats his foes as his sons; magnanimous, for he counts gold and silver as stones or sand, and generous, for he never compares the gift with the recipient, but gives away everything as it comes to hand. It is the custom for people to carry many presents to the shogun on the first day of the eighth month, but so freely are those things given away that nothing remains by the evening, I am told."

A later historian, Rai Sanyo (1780-1832), wrote: "There were as brave men and as clever in the days of the Minamoto as in the days of the Ashikaga. Why, then, did the former never dare to take up arms against the Bakufu, whereas the latter never ceased to assault the Ashikaga? It was because the Minamoto and the Hojo understood the expediency of not entrusting too much power to potential rivals, whereas the Ashikaga gave away lands so rashly that some families—as the Akamatsu, the Hosokawa, and the Hatakeyama—came into the possession of three or four provinces, and in an extreme case one family—that of Yamana—controlled ten provinces, or one-sixth of the whole empire. These septs, finding themselves so powerful, became unmanageable. Then the division of the Ashikaga into the Muromachi magnates and the Kamakura chiefs brought two sets of rulers upon the same stage, and naturally intrigue and distrust were born, so that, in the end, Muromachi was shaken by Hosokawa, and Kamakura was overthrown by Uesugi. An animal with too ponderous a tail cannot wag it, and a stick too heavy at one end is apt to break. The Ashikaga angled with such valuable bait that they ultimately lost both fish and bait. During the thirteen generations of their sway there was no respite from struggle between family and family or between chief and vassal." Takauji's record plainly shows that deception was one of his weapons. He was absolutely unscrupulous. He knew also how to entice men with gain, but he forgot that those who came for gain will go also for gain. It would seem, too, that he sacrificed justice to the fear of alienating his supporters. Not otherwise can we account for his leniency towards the Ko brothers, who were guilty of such violations of propriety.

THE SECOND ASHIKAGA SHOGUN

Takauji was succeeded in the shogunate by his eldest son, Yoshiakira, of whom so much has already been heard. The fortunes of the Southern Court were now at low ebb. During the year (1359) after Takauji's death, Kamakura contributed materially to the support of the Ashikaga cause. The Kwanto was then under the sway of Takauji's fourth son, Motouji, one of the ablest men of his time. He had just succeeded in quelling the defection of the Nitta family, and his military power was so great that his captains conceived the ambition of marching to Kyoto and supplanting Yoshiakira by Motouji. But the latter, instead of adopting this disloyal counsel, despatched a large army under Hatakeyama Kunikiyo to attack the Southern Court. Marching by the two highways of Settsu and Kawachi, this army attacked Yoshino and gained some important successes. But the fruits of these victories were not gathered. The Hatakeyama chief developed ambitions of his own, and, on returning to the Kwanto, was crushed by Motouji and deprived of his office of shitsuji, that post being given again to Uesugi Noriaki, "who had been in exile since the death of Tadayoshi in 1352. At, or shortly after, this time, Kai and Izu and, later on, Mutsu, were put under Kamakura jurisdiction, and their peaceful and orderly condition formed a marked contrast to the general state of the rest of the empire."*

*Murdoch's History of Japan.

The next event of cardinal importance in this much disturbed period was the defection of Hosokawa Kiyouji, one of the shitsuji in Kyoto. This powerful chief, disappointed in his expectations of reward, went over to the Southern Court in 1361, and the result was that the Ashikaga shogun had to flee from Kyoto, escorting Go-Kogon. The situation soon changed however. Hosokawa Kiyouji, returning to his native province, Awa, essayed to bring the whole of Shikoku into allegiance to the Southern Court, but was signally worsted by his cousin, Hosokawa Yoriyuki—afterwards very famous,—and scarcely a month had elapsed before Yoshiakira was back in the capital. In the same year (1362), the Northerners received a marked increase of strength by the accession of the Yamana family, which was at that time supreme in the five central provinces of eastern Japan—namely, Tamba, Inaba, Bizen, Bitchu, and Mimasaka. During ten years this family had supported the Southern Court, but its chief, Tokiuji, now yielded to the persuasion of Yoshiakira's emissaries, and espoused the Ashikaga cause on condition that he, Tokiuji, should be named high constable of the above five provinces.

Meanwhile, the partisans of the late Tadayoshi—the Kira, the Ishido, the Momonoi, the Nikki, and others—constituted a source of perpetual menace, and even among the Ashikaga themselves there was a rebel (Takatsune). Yoshiakira became weary of the unceasing strife. He addressed overtures to the Southern Court and they were accepted on condition that he made formal act of surrender. This the shogun refused to do, but he treated Go-Murakami's envoy with every mark of respect, and though the pourparlers proved finally abortive, they had continued for five months, an evidence that both sides were anxious to find a path to peace. Yoshiakira died in the same year, 1367.