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But not all had the title of kwanryo or wielded the extensive power attached to that office. Only the first four were thus fortunate. From the days of the fifth, Shigeuji, evil times overtook the family. These things fell out in 1439, when Mochiuji died. To avoid confusion it is necessary to note that the chief official in the shogun's court at Muromachi in Kyoto was also called kwanryo.
But such exculpations amount to saying that he was an essentially weak man, the slave of his surroundings. The lawlessness of the time and the indifference with which the shogun's mandates were treated find illustration in the story of the Kwanto. When Mochiuji perished, the only member of his family that survived was his five-year-old son, Shigeuji.
But Mochiuji was not subject to such emotions. He rebelled vehemently against the lenient treatment accorded to Ujinori's son after their father's death, and the shogun had difficulty in placating him.
As for the Kamakura Ashikaga, the three remaining sons of Mochiuji fled to Koga in Shimosa, where two of them were subsequently killed by a Kamakura army, and the third, Shigeuji, fared as has already been described. It has been shown that Akamatsu Norimura was among the captains who contributed most to the triumph of the Ashikaga cause.
Very soon the Kamakura force was shattered, and Mochiuji himself fled to the temple Shomyo-ji in Kanazawa, where he begged to be allowed to retire from the world. But the shogun declined to pardon him and remained obdurate in spite of earnest and repeated petitions from Norizane, praying that Mochiuji should be forgiven and allowed to retire in favour of his son, Yoshihisa.
This child placed himself under the protection of Muromachi. It will be remembered that Uesugi Norizane, lamenting his unwilling share in Mochiuji's destruction, had entered religion. But the Yuki family, who had given shelter to two sons of Mochiuji, objected to bow their heads to the Uesugi, and persuaded Shigeuji to have Noritada killed.
There the Shoni, the Kikuchi, the Otomo, and the Shiba had always defied a central authority, and now Norishige, a younger brother of the assassin, Akamatsu Mitsusuke; found among them supporters of a scheme to restore the fortunes of his house. In the Kwanto partisans of the late kwanryo, Mochiuji, raised their heads.
Mochiuji, then in his twentieth year, sympathized with Norimoto, and in the sequel, Ujinori, with whom was allied Mochiuji's younger brother, Mochinaka, took the field at the head of such a force that the governor-general must have succumbed had not the shogun, Yoshimochi, rendered aid. This should have placed Kamakura under a heavy debt of gratitude to Muromachi.
In 1428, he fell sick, and, the end being in sight, he ordered his advisers to consult about his successor. Some advocated the appointment of his kinsman, Mochiuji, governor-general of the Kwanto, and Mochiuji himself prayed that it should be so. But the choice ultimately fell on Yoshimochi's younger brother, Gien, who had embraced religion and was then serving as abbot of the temple Shoren-in.
We have seen the second and third governors-general of the Kwanto, Ujimitsu and Mitsukane, plotting to supplant the elder branch of their family in Kyoto, and we have seen how the accession of the priest, Yoshinori, had disappointed the ambition of the fourth governor-general, Mochiuji, who, if unable to become shogun himself, would fain have obtained that high office for his son, Yoshihisa.
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