Ashikaga shogunate

The Japanese military government ruled by the Ashikaga family from 1336 to 1573. Based in Kyoto, it presided over the Muromachi period and increasingly fragmented political authority.

Shogun: A hereditary military ruler who held governing authority in Japan. The Ashikaga shoguns headed this military government.
Kamakura shogunate: Japan’s first lasting samurai government, ruled by the Minamoto and later the Hōjō from Kamakura. Its collapse created the opening for Ashikaga rule.
Onin War: A succession and factional conflict fought in Kyoto from 1467 to 1477. Its destruction of the capital accelerated the shogunate’s loss of control.
Higashiyama culture: A late fifteenth-century cultural movement associated with shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa and refined simplicity. It developed within the shogunate’s courtly world during its political decline.
Muromachi bakufu: The Ashikaga military government, named for its headquarters in Kyoto’s Muromachi district. This is the government’s institutional name, often used interchangeably with Ashikaga shogunate.
Kenmu Restoration: Emperor Go-Daigo’s brief attempt, beginning in 1333, to restore direct imperial rule. Disputes over the restoration drove Takauji into rebellion and toward founding a new shogunate.
Sengoku period: A long era of civil war in Japan, marked by competing regional lords and shifting alliances. The shogunate’s fragmentation gave way to this era of decentralized warfare.
Kinkaku-ji: A Kyoto temple whose Golden Pavilion was built as a villa for shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu. The pavilion embodies Yoshimitsu’s wealth and the shogunate’s cultural patronage.
Shugo: Provincial military governors in medieval Japan who gained substantial local power. The shogunate relied on these governors, whose growing autonomy weakened central rule.
Ashikaga Takauji: The samurai leader who founded the Ashikaga shogunate and became its first shogun. His break with Go-Daigo set the new military government in motion.

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