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The matter was not mooted during Takauji's lifetime, but when, on his demise, the comparatively incompetent Yoshiakira came into power at Muromachi, certain military magnates of the eastern provinces urged the Kamakura kwanryo, Motouji, to usurp his brother's position. Motouji, essentially as loyal as he was astute, spurned the proposition. But it was not so with his son and successor, Ujimitsu.

It was strange, indeed, that in an age when the sword was the paramount tribunal, the highest dignitaries in the land revered the exponents of ethics and literature. Takauji and his younger brother, Tadayoshi, sat at the feet of Gen-e as their preceptor. Yoshimitsu appointed Sugawara Hidenaga to be Court lecturer. Ujimitsu, the Kamakura kwanryo, took Sugawara Toyonaga for preacher.

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.

Balked in his design against Kyoto, Ujimitsu turned his hand against the Nitta, old enemies of his family, and crushing them, placed the Ashikaga power on a very firm basis in the Kwanto. His son, Mitsukane, had the gift of handling troops with great skill, and in his time the prestige of the Kamakura kwanryo reached its highest point.

The apparent clashing of dates in the case of the fourth and fifth shoguns, Yoshimochi and Yoshikazu, is due to the fact that on the death of the latter, in 1425, the former resumed the office and held it until his own death, in 1428. Born Died Motouji 1340 1367 Ujimitsu 1357 1398 Mitsukane 1376 1409 Mochiuji 1398 1439 Shigeuji 1434 1497 Masatomo .... 1491 Takamoto .... .... Haruuji .... 1560

Uesugi Noriaki served as shitsuji in the time of the first kwanryo, and the same service was rendered by Noriaki's son, Yoshinori, and by the latter's nephew, Tomomune, in the time of the second kwanryo, Ujimitsu.