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Curious and intricate was the attitude of the Hosokawa towards the rival aspirants to the shogunate. Sozen's aid, as related above, had originally been invoked and exercised in behalf of Yoshimasa, the shogun's son by the lady Tomi. Hence, it is not surprising to find the Yamana leader turning his back upon the sometime bonze, Yoshimi, in October, 1469.
In this matter, Katsumoto's volte-face had been nearly as signal as Sozen's, for the former was Yoshimi's champion at the beginning. Henceforth the war assumed the character of a struggle for the succession to the shogunate.
He desired to break the power of Hatakeyama Tokuhon, and with that ultimate object he courted the alliance of Sozen, giving his own daughter to the latter in marriage and himself adopting Sozen's son, Koretoyo. Thus, the two chiefs were subsequently found acting together against Tokuhon's attempt to substitute his son, albeit illegitimate, for his nephew, as heir to the Hatakeyama estates.
From the outset he took care to legalize his cause by inducing the Emperor and the ex-Emperor to remove to Muromachi, where they were guarded by the Hosokawa troops, and the defections to which this must ultimately expose Sozen's ranks were supplemented by fomenting in the domains of the Yamana and their allies intrigues which necessitated a diversion of strength from the Kyoto campaign.
Yoshinari displayed greatly superior skill as a strategist, and finally Yamana Sozen, who had always entertained a good opinion of him even while opposing his succession at the outset, openly espoused Yoshinari's cause. The immediate result was that Masanaga, who had been named kwanryo in 1464, had to give way to SOzen's nominee, Shiba Yoshikado, and found himself in deadly peril.
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