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Updated: May 13, 2025
Mitsusuke perished, and the three provinces he had administered were transferred to the Yamana Harima to Mochitoyo, Mimasaka to Norikiyo, and Bizen to Noriyuki. We have seen how, in 1392, the Yamana family was shattered in a revolt against the authority of the shogun, Yoshimitsu. We now see the fortunes of the family thoroughly rehabilitated.
All the details of the ceremony were ordered in conformity with precedents set in the times of the Ashikaga shoguns, Yoshimitsu and Yoshimasa, but the greatly superior resources of Hideyoshi were enlisted to give eclat to the fete. The ceremonies were spread over five days. They included singing, dancing, couplet composing, and present giving. The last was on a scale of unprecedented dimensions.
A small palace, with interior decorations of the usual conventional subjects storks, flying geese, rising moons, bamboo-shoots, etc. together with a small, round, thatched summer-house, where, five hundred years ago, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, the Shogun monk, was wont to pass the time in meditation, form the remaining sole attractions of the garden.
Twenty-eight years later, that is to say, in 1423, he abdicated in favour of his son, Yoshikazu. The cause of that step deserves notice. Yoshimitsu had intended to pass over Yoshimochi, his first-born, in favour of his second son, Yoshitsugu, but death prevented the consummation of that design. Yoshimochi, however, knew that it had been entertained.
His long travels to investigate the methods of other masters so as to assimilate their best features, are historically recorded, and at the head of the great trinity of Japanese swordsmiths his name is placed by universal acclaim, his companions being Go no Yoshihiro and Fujiwara Yoshimitsu.* In Muromachi days so much depended on the sword that military men thought it worthy of all honour.
In fact, Yoshimitsu showed himself thoroughly earnest in promoting oversea commerce, and a considerable measure of success attended his efforts.
Mitsukane, when he abetted the Ouchi's attempt to overthrow the Kyoto shogun, persuaded himself that he was only carrying out his father's unachieved purpose, and the shogun, Yoshimitsu, took no step to punish him, preferring to accept his overtures made through Uesugi Tomomune.
It appears that at that time China also suffered from the depredations of Japanese corsairs, for the annals say that she repeatedly remonstrated, and that, in 1401, Yoshimitsu despatched to China an envoy carrying presents and escorting some Chinese subjects who had been cast away on the Japanese coast or carried captive thither.
It provided that an envoy should be sent by each of the contracting parties in every period of ten years, the suite of this envoy to be limited to two hundred, and any ship carrying arms to be regarded as a pirate. The first envoy from the Ming Court under this treaty was met by Yoshimitsu himself at Hyogo, and being escorted to Kyoto, was hospitably lodged in a hotel there.
He is said to have gone in and out at the Imperial palaces without the slightest reserve, and on more than one occasion history accuses him of flagrantly transgressing the limits of decency in his intercourse with Suken-mon-in, mother of the Emperor Go-Enyu. As a subverter of public morals, however, the palm belongs, not to Yoshimitsu, but to his immediate successor, Yoshimochi.
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