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Updated: June 14, 2025


Then the Sumimoto branch of the Hosokawa, taking advantage of Ouchi's absence, mustered a force in Shikoku and moved against Kyoto. Takakuni found himself in a difficult position. In the capital his overbearing conduct had alienated the shogun, Yoshitane, and from the south a hostile army was approaching.

The Hosokawa were the most powerful, and had for representative in the middle of the fifteenth century an administrator, Katsumoto, who to extensive erudition and a profound knowledge of medicine added very exceptional gifts of statecraft and organizing ability.

From this grievously complicated story the facts which emerge essentially and conspicuously are: first, that Yamana Sozen now occupied the position of champion to representatives of the two great families of Hatakeyama and Shiba; secondly, that the rival successors of these families looked to Hosokawa Katsumoto for aid; thirdly, that the relations between Sozen and Katsumoto had become very strained, and fourthly, that the issue at stake in every case was never more lofty than personal ambition.. The succession to the shogunate also was in dispute.

For instance, in one play the palace of Lord Hosokawa, in which was preserved the celebrated painting of Dharuma by Sesson, suddenly takes fire through the negligence of the samurai in charge. Resolved at all hazards to rescue the precious painting, he rushes into the burning building and seizes the kakemono, only to find all means of exit cut off by the flames.

Attending Maeda Toshiiye's death-bed, he had seen the partisans of the deceased baron transfer their allegiance to Ieyasu through the intervention of Hosokawa Tadaoki, and he had learned that his own life was immediately threatened by the seven generals.

The crude diplomacy of the Yamana leader was unable to devise any effective reply to the spectacular pageant of two sovereigns, a shogun, and a duly-elected heir to the shogunate all marshalled on the Hosokawa side. Nothing better was conceived than a revival of the Southern dynasty, which had ceased to be an active factor seventy-eight years previously.

He had succeeded to that office in 1367, at the age of nine, and his father, then within a year of death, had entrusted him to the care of Hosokawa Yoriyuki, one of the ablest men of his own or any generation. There are strong reasons for thinking that between this statesman and Masanori an understanding existed.

Miyoshi Nagateru retired to Chion-in, where he committed suicide; Sumimoto fled to Awa, dying there a few months later, and Yoshitane, after brief refuge in the island of Awaji, died in Awa, in 1523. Thus, Hosokawa Takakuni found himself supreme in Kyoto, and he proceeded to appoint a shogun, without awaiting the demise of Yoshitane.

Teika's son, Tameiye, won such favour in the eyes of the Kamakura shogun, Sanetomo, that the latter conferred on him the manor of Hosokawa, in Harima. Dying, Tameiye bequeathed this property to his son, Tamesuke, but he, being robbed of it by his step-brother, fell into a state of miserable poverty which was shared by his mother, herself well known as an authoress under the name of Abutsu-ni.

In the home provinces the warrior-priests of Nara sought to avenge the chastisement they had suffered at Yoshinori's hands, and among the immediate entourage of Muromachi, the Hosokawa, the Hatakeyama, the Shiba, and others engaged in desperate struggles about questions of succession. Even when he reached man's estate, Yoshimasa proved wholly incompetent to deal with these complications.

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