Tag Archives: Kyushu

Go-Daigo had found refuge in a place in the mountains called Yoshino. Japan now had two emperors, one in Kyoto and the other in Yoshino. Takauji set out to simplify matters. As a first step, he had his puppet, the Kyoto emperor, appoint him shogun. In this way, Takauji became the founder of a new line of shoguns who were called, after their family name, the Ashikaga shoguns. Their shogunate lasted from 1336 to 1573, nearly twice as long as the Kamakura shogunate. Takauji and his successors did not rule anywhere near as firmly as Yorimoto and the Hojo family. They never controlled all of Japan or even much of it. Most of the time, they could not even keep order in the areas they supposedly did control. The Ashikaga shogunate went through three stages. The first stage, from 1136 to 1392, was marked by constant fighting between supporters of the rival emperors. It ended when the shogun lured the Yoshino emperor to Kyoto by promising to let his branch of the imperial family take turns with the other branch on the throne. The Ashikagas broke their promise, for no descendant of Go-Daigo ever became emperor. At least Japan had only one emperor. The middle stage of the shogunate, from 1392 to 1467, was the only time when the Ashikagas really seemed to rule. The last stage, from 1467 to 1573, was disastrous for the family. It began with a ruinous war between two groups of power-hungry warlords. In the fighting, Kyoto was devastated and the shogunate was finished as a force in government. The shoguns hung on to their post for another century, mainly because no one bothered to take it from them. When the last Ashikaga shogun was stripped of his title in 1573, the shogun had become …

DRAWING ON nature for inspiration, the Japanese invented a number of gods and goddesses. They took it for granted that their islands and their ancestors had been created by gods. Many different stories were told about how these things had happened. The official account of how Japan got started was finally laid down in 720, in a book called Nikon Shoki, or The History of Japan. This book, written on the orders of the emperor, was a hodge-podge of myths and family trees, with a little recent history thrown in. Its authors were trying to please their imperial master. T o give Japan a long, respectable past like China’s, they claimed that it had been founded nearly fourteen hundred years before, by a god named Jimmu. They traced the descent of the emperor all the way back to this god. Nihon Shoki was not a very reliable source of facts. Almost to the present, most Japanese people have believed everything it said. For this reason it is the most important book in their history. According to its authors, everything began with the god Izanagi and the goddess Izanami, who lived in heaven. They came down to the earth, where Izanami gave birth to the Japanese islands. Then the couple had other children, all gods and goddesses. Izanami died while bearing the fire god and sank down to the lower world. There, Izanagi visited her. Izanami’s flesh had begun to rot; rather than let Izanagi see her in such a state, she sent him away. In his grief, Izanagi shed his garments, each of which turned into a god or goddess. Then, to purify himself after his meeting with Izanami, he washed. As he did, every part of his body became a god or a goddess. MIRROR, SWORD AND JEWEL Among …