ashikaga

Updated: June 25, 2025

To the masses, contemplation of illustrated periodicals, the worthy product of their own industrialism, would give more digestible food for artistic enjoyment than the early Italians or the Ashikaga masters, whom they pretend to admire. The name of the artist is more important to them than the quality of the work.

Kakuzo Okakura - The Book of Tea

At this point there is a break in the unrelenting continuity of the operations. It should obviously have been the aim of the Imperialists to strike a conclusive blow before the Ashikaga leaders had time to assemble and organize their multitudinous supporters in Shikoku, Kyushu, and the provinces on the north of the Inland Sea.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The frugal austerity of life under the rule of the Hojo was changed to lavish extravagance under the Ashikaga.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

There ensued disturbances constantly increasing in area and intensity, and not only involving finally the ruin of the Ashikaga shogunate but also subverting all law, order, and morality. Sons turned their hand against fathers, brothers against brothers, and vassals against chiefs.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

This text-book, the Doji-kyo, was compiled by a priest, Annen, who lived in the second half of the ninth century. Its origin belongs, therefore, to a much more remote era than that of the Muromachi shoguns, but, in common with the other text-books enumerated above, its extensive use is first mentioned in the Ashikaga epoch.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

But the Nitta chief decided to await the arrival of the Nakasen-do army, and the respite thus afforded enabled the Ashikaga forces to rally. Tadayoshi reached the Hakone Pass and posted his troops on its western slopes in a position of immense natural vantage, while Takauji himself occupied the routes on the north, his van being at Takenoshita.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

He quickly organized a powerful army with the intention of joining Yoshisada's attack upon Kamakura, but not being in time to carry out that programme, he changed the direction of his march and hastened towards Kyoto. He arrived there when the Ashikaga troops were laying siege to Hiei-zan, and effecting a union with the Imperialists, he succeeded in raising the siege and recovering the city.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Once only, by the arbitrary folly of the Ashikaga shogun, the imperial cult had been seriously interfered with; and the social earthquake consequent upon that division of the imperial house, apprised the usurpers of the enormity of their blunder.... Only the integrity of the imperial succession, the uninterrupted maintenance of the imperial worship, made it possible even for Iyeyasu to clamp together the indissoluble units of society.

Lafcadio Hearn - Japan: an Attempt at Interpretation

When Ashikaga Takauji desired to take counsel of Muso Kokushi, he repaired to that renowned priest's temple and treated him as a respected parent; and Yoshimitsu, the third of the Ashikaga shoguns, showed equal respect towards Gido, Zekkai and Jorin, whose advice he constantly sought.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

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.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era