Tag Archives: Taoism

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 …

DURING THE turbulent Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms era, the main outside threat to China came, as usual, from the north. A tough Mongol people from Manchuria helped one of the Chinese Warlords conquer North China. In return, he let them settle around Peking. Some of them became farmers, but their nomadic habits of roving and fighting remained strong. From time to time they raided the North China Plain, striking terror into the hearts of the peasants. These troublesome people were called the Khitan. Another form of their name, Khitai, sounded like “Cathay” to European travelers who later came to China. Throughout the Middle Ages, China was known in Europe as Cathay. In 960, the ruler of north China sent his best general after the Khitan to teach them a lesson. Instead, the general seized power and proclaimed himself emperor. As founder of the Sung dynasty, he was later called T’ai Tsu, or “Great Beginner.” Before he died in 976, he conquered most of China. His brother T’ai Tsung — “Great Ancestor”– conquered the rest, except for the Khitan kingdom in the northeast. The Sung dynasty was to reign until 1279. A1though it started out boldly, it never became as powerful as the Han and T’ang dynasties. One reason was that the emperors deliberately kept their army commanders short of men and money to make sure they did not revolt. As a result, the empire was constantly menaced by barbarians. In the end, it was destroyed by them. For generations, the Sung emperors bought peace by bribing the Khitan and a northwestern barbarian nation called the Hsi Hsia. Then a third barbarian nation entered the picture. In 1114, Manchurian nomads who called themselves the Chin, meaning “Golden,” attacked the Khitan. Seeing a chance to recover the long-lost northeast territory, Emperor …

THE three states into which China had split were soon split up themselves into even smaller divisions. For three and a half centuries, war raged almost continuously among rival kings. Doubt and confusion were everywhere. The period between 220 and 589 is called the Six Dynasties era, after six ruling families in a row which used Nanking as their capital. In all those years‚ the memory of the Han Empire never died. Looking back longingly at the peace and order of that time, the people came to think of the Han government as the great model which all rulers should try to copy. With the country divided, it was easy for the barbarians to invade. During the fourth century, wave after wave of nomads rolled south across the North China Plain, as the Huns were joined by their relatives, the Mongols and the Turks. Riding swift ponies, the invaders mowed down the Chinese foot soldiers with deadly arrows from their crossbows. Huge numbers of Chinese fled-some to Kansu in the northwest and Szechwan in the west, but many more to the lands south of the Yangtze River. The Chinese population of south China doubled, tripled and quadrupled, until it overwhelmed the non-Chinese population. Even in north China the Chinese greatly outnumbered their barbarian conquerors. Due to this and because the Chinese system of government was much better suited than theirs to a country of farmers, the newcomers gradually adopted Chinese ways. THE SEVEN SAGES Chinese ways were themselves changing. Just as the rebellions, wars and invasions uprooted millions of people from their settled lives on the land, so they uprooted the beliefs by which these people lived. These beliefs, Confucianism and Taoism, were mainly rules for everyday living. They had worked well enough in orderly Han times, but they no …