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Updated: June 24, 2025
Their fury bore fruit. Ii was assassinated. At the moment when a strong hand was most needed, that of the regent was removed. And as the feeling of bitterness against the foreigners grew, the influence of the shogun declined.
Ashikaga Masatomo, seeking to disinherit his eldest son, Chachamaru, in favour of his second son, Yoshimichi, was killed by the former, the latter taking refuge with the Imagawa family in Suruga, by whom he was escorted to the capital, where he became the Muromachi shogun under the name of Yoshizumi.
The young shogun, however, did not long survive the punishment of his father's murderers. He died in 1443, at the age of ten, and was succeeded by his brother Yoshimasa, then in his eighth year. During the latter's minority, the administration fell into the hands of Hatakeyama Mochikuni and Hosokawa Katsumoto, who held the office of Muromachi kwanryo alternately.
Some historians of the time relate that the shogun's infatuation betrayed him into promising to raise Yoshiyasu's revenue to a million koku, and to nominate as successor to the shogunate a son borne by Yoshiyasu's wife to Tsunayoshi; but according to tradition, these crowning extravagances were averted on the very night preceding the day of their intended consummation, the shogun being stabbed to death by his wife, who immediately committed suicide.
In a word, the Bakufu had to disguise their policy in terms such as might placate the Kyoto conservatives, and this deception was once carried so far that an envoy sent to Kyoto from Yedo represented the shogun as hostile at heart to foreigners, though tolerating them temporarily as a matter of prudence.
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." Why, then, did the former never dare to take up arms against the Bakufu, whereas the latter never ceased to assault the Ashikaga?
He then memorialized the shogun in the sense that these Korean ambassadors were merely Chinese spies, and that instead of receiving a lavish welcome, they should be required to limit their journey to the island of Tsushima, where only a very restricted ceremonial should be performed in their honour.
I have elsewhere said that the title "shogun" originally signified, as did the Roman military term Imperator, only a commander-in-chief: it now became the title of the supreme ruler de facto, in his double capacity of civil and military sovereign, the King of kings.
He had to visit Yedo once in every five or six years for the purpose of making a report to the shogun in person. To qualify for this high office a man must have served as governor of Osaka. In the Imperial city the municipal administrator heard suits-at-law presented by citizens, managed the affairs of temples and shrines, and was responsible for collecting the taxes in the home provinces.
Every one who has been to Europe will recall the long lines of Lombardy poplars that make the fair vision of many French roads linger long in the memory, and I can never forget the magnificent avenue of cryptomerias gigantic in size, straight as ship masts, fair as the cedars of Lebanon that line the road leading to the great Shogun Iyeyasu's tomb in Nikko.
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