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Updated: May 20, 2025
After the death of Kusunoki Masashige, of Nitta Yoshisada, and of Kitabatake Akiiye, the strategical direction of the war devolved mainly upon Kitabatake Chikafusa, so far as the Southern Court was concerned.
It was due to his clever strategy that Kyoto lay under constant menace from the south. If the first great protagonists in the struggle between the Northern and the Southern Courts were Prince Morinaga and Takauji, and those of the next were Nitta Yoshisada and Takauji, the third couple was Kitabatake Chikafusa and Takauji."
This must have been fully apparent to Kusunoki Masashige, an able strategist. Yet a delay of some weeks occurred. A quasi-historical record, the Taiheiki, ascribes this to Yoshinaga's infatuated reluctance to quit the company of a Court beauty whom the Emperor had bestowed on him. Probably the truth is that the Imperialists were seriously in want of rest and that Yoshisada fell ill with fever.
They put into the field an army said to have numbered one hundred thousand of all arms. But their ranks were perpetually reduced by defections, whereas those of the Imperialists received constant accessions. The campaign lasted only a fortnight. For the final attack Yoshisada divided his army into three corps and advanced against Kamakura from the north, the east, and the west.
Thus, when his patent of high constable arrived, he rejected it with disdain, saying that he had already received a patent from the shogun, Takauji, and was in no need of an Imperial grant which "could be altered as easily as turning one's hand." Yoshisada, enraged at having been duped, laid siege to Shirahata but found it almost invulnerable.
Nitta Yoshisada ought to have stood next in order; then Akamatsu Norimura; then Nawa Nagatoshi, and finally Ashikaga Takauji.* In the case of Takauji, there was comparatively little merit. He had taken up arms against the Imperial cause at the outset, and even in the assault on Rokuhara he had been of little service. Yet to him the Crown allotted the greatest honour and the richest rewards.
Some excuse may be found in Takauji's lineage, but in that respect he was inferior to Nitta Yoshisada. Still more flagrant partiality was displayed in other directions. Relying on the promises of the Funanoe edicts epitomized above, thousands of military officers thronged the Court in Kyoto, clamouring for recognition of their services.
Many heroic incidents marked the catastrophe and showed the spirit animating the bushi of that epoch. A few of them will find a fitting place here. *This cliff Inamura-ga-saki may be seen at Kamakura to-day. Tradition says that Yoshisada threw his sword into the waves, supplicating the god of the Sea to roll back the water and open a path for the loyal army.
It was on March 11, 1336, that Takauji went westward from Bingo; it was on the 2nd of April that Yoshisada invested Shirahata, and it was on the 3rd of July that the siege was raised. The Ashikaga brothers had enjoyed a respite of more than three months, and had utilized it vigorously.
He and Nitta Yoshisada are the central figures in the long campaign upon which Japan now entered. Masashige belonged to the Tachibana family, which stood second among the four great septs of Japan the Fujiwara, the Tachibana, the Minamoto, and the Taira and Yoshisada claimed kinship with the Minamoto.
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