Background
Motouji Ashikaga was born in 1340.
足利基氏
Motouji Ashikaga was born in 1340.
His childhood name first was Ikuō later become Kamewakamaru. In the first weeks of 1336, two years after the fall of Kamakura, the first of the Ashikaga shōguns Ashikaga Takauji left the city for Kyoto in pursuit of Nitta Yoshisada. He left behind his 4-year-old son Yoshiakira as his representative in the trust of three guardians: Hosokawa Kiyouji, Uesugi Noriaki, and Shiba Ienaga. This action however formally divided the country in two, giving the east and the west two separate administrations with similar authority and powers.
In 1349 Takauji called Yoshiakira to Kyoto to take his brother Tadayoshi's place, replacing him in Kamakura with another of his sons, Motouji, to whom he gave the title of Kantō kanrei, or "Kantō deputy". Because the kanrei was the son of the shōgun, ruled Kantō and controlled the military forces there, the area was usually called Kamakura Bakufu or Kamakura shogunate, and Motouji shogun or Kamakura/Kantō Gosho, an equivalent title. When later the habit of calling kubō the shōgun spread from Kyoto to the Kantō, the ruler of Kamakura came to be called Kamakura kubō. The kanrei title was passed on to the Uesugi hereditary shitsuji.However, the first time the Kanto Kubō title appears in writing is in a 1382 entry of the Tsurugaoka Jishoan, after Motouji's death.