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These same records of the Onin year-period also make clear that one of the factors chiefly responsible for the disturbance was Yoshimasa's curious lack of sympathy with the burdens of the people. Even one grand ceremony in the course of from five to six years sufficed to empty the citizens' pockets.
Yoshimasa's love of poetry impelled him to publish the Kinshudan.* Above all, Yoshihisa was an earnest scholar.
But in Yoshimasa's time there Were nine of such fetes in five years, and four of them had no warrant whatever except pleasure seeking as a performance of the Sarugaku mime on an immense scale; a flower-viewing party; an al-fresco entertainment, and a visit to the cherry blossoms.
During the days of Yoshimasa's shogunate such profits were realized that overtrading took place, and there resulted a temporary cessation. Fifty years later, when Yoshiharu ruled at Muromachi , a Buddhist priest, Zuisa, sent by the shogun to China, and an envoy, Sosetsu, despatched by the Ouchi family, came into collision at Ningpo.
Tokuhon, in his capacity of kwanryo, naturally had much weight with the shogun, but Yoshimasa's conduct on that occasion must be attributed mainly to a laisser-aller mood which he had then developed, and which impelled him to follow the example set by the Imperial Court in earlier times by leaving the military families in the provinces to fight their own battles.
Thus, in 1463, when an elaborate Buddhist ceremony had to be performed on the decease of Yoshimasa's mother, a tax in the form of cotton cloth was levied from the shugo, a ruler of three provinces contributing ten thousand pieces; a ruler of two provinces, five thousand, and so on.* *A "piece" was 40 feet, approximately.
We can only say that in the days of Yoshimasa's shogunate, that is, during the second half of the fifteenth century, several choice varieties began to be manufactured, as the nashiji, the togidashi, the negoro-nuri, the konrinji-nuri, the shunkei-nuri, the tsuishu, and the tsuikoku.
In the days of Yoshimitsu, they were taxed at each of the four seasons; in Yoshinori's time the same imposts were levied once a month, and under Yoshimasa's rule the pawnbrokers had to pay nine times in November, 1466, and eight times in December of the same year.
Four or five hundred per cent, is spoken of, and, further, the Ming sovereign, in Yoshimasa's time, responded generously, as has been already shown, to the shogun's appeal for supplies of copper cash. One Japanese fan could be exchanged for a copy of a valuable book, and a sword costing one kwan-mon in Japan fetched five kwan-mon in China. Gold, too, was much more valuable in China than in Japan.
It was under this financial pressure that Yoshimasa approached the Ming emperor seeking pecuniary aid. His requests are said to have assumed the guise of appeals in behalf of famine-stricken people, but there is no evidence that any of the presents were devoted to that purpose. Partial apologists for Yoshimasa's infatuation are not wanting.
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