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Updated: June 15, 2025
In 1390, tracts of land measuring from one-half of a province to two or three provinces are found to have been converted from the shugo's jurisdictional areas into military domains. Such magnates as Yamana Tokiuji held from five to eleven provinces. These puissant captains had castles and armies of their own. At first, they respected the requisitions of the Bakufu.
In the same year , the Northerners received a marked increase of strength by the accession of the Yamana family, which was at that time supreme in the five central provinces of eastern Japan namely, Tamba, Inaba, Bizen, Bitchu, and Mimasaka.
For the Kwanto and Shikoku, the Hosokawa house was the kunimochi; for Shinano, Etchu, Echigo, and Kaga, the Hatakeyama; for Ise, Kai, and Suruga, the Yamana; and for Kyushu, the tandai. After the power of the tandai had declined, the Ouchi family took its place.
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.
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.
From this grievously complicated story the facts which emerge essentially and conspicuously are: first, that Yamana Sozen now occupied the position of champion to representatives of the two great families of Hatakeyama and Shiba; secondly, that the rival successors of these families looked to Hosokawa Katsumoto for aid; thirdly, that the relations between Sozen and Katsumoto had become very strained, and fourthly, that the issue at stake in every case was never more lofty than personal ambition.. The succession to the shogunate also was in dispute.
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.
Two months later re-enforcements reached the Western Army, and thereafter, for nearly two years, victory rested with the Yamana. But Katsumoto clung desperately to his position.
Thenceforth, on the accession of a Northern sovereign a merely nominal ceremony of transferring the sacred regalia sufficed. As for the ex-Emperors Kogon and Komyo, they turned their backs finally on the world and became priests of the Zen sect of Buddhism. In 1353, the Southern court received a signal accession of strength in the allegiance of the Yamana family and of Tadafuyu.
Thus Yamana Sozen, as the high constable of Harima province, held administrative authority in fourteen districts covering an area of 10,414 cho, and if to this be added the expanse of his fief, namely, 8016 cho, we get a total nearly equal to the manors of Hosokawa Katsumoto.
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