Background
Yoshimasa Ashikaga was born on 20 January 1436 in kyoto. He was a son of the sixth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshinori.
足利 義政
Yoshimasa Ashikaga was born on 20 January 1436 in kyoto. He was a son of the sixth Ashikaga shogun, Yoshinori.
On his father’s death in 1441, his elder brother Yoshikatsu became shogun, but Yoshikatsu died of dysentery two years later and Yoshimasa succeeded him to become the eighth shogun. At first he governed with the assistance of Hatakeyama Mochikuni and other leaders of the great vassal families, but later these were replaced in power by Yoshimasa’s wife, Hino Tomiko, and a number of underlings who had managed to maneuver themselves into positions of authority.
As Yoshimasa had no son, he persuaded his younger brother, who had become a Buddhist monk, to reenter secular life and, with the name Yoshimi, appointed him heir to the shogunate with Hosokawa Katsumoto to act as his advisor.
As a result of his son's birth, a struggle ensued between the two rival factions headed by Hosokawa and Yamana respectively, the other great families taking sides with one or the other. For over ten years, from 1467 to 1477, the opposing armies fought in Kyoto and its environs. The struggle, known as the Onin War, resulted in Yoshihisa becoming shogun, but in the process Kyoto was reduced to ashes and the power of the Muromachi shogunate fell to a new low. In addition, the great warrior families who had engaged in the strug¬gle were so debilitated that they could not defend themselves against ambi¬tious retainers who aspired to replace them in power. The social upheaval spread throughout the country, ushering in the period known as the Sengoku jidai, or Era of Civil Strife, which lasted for one hundred years and saw many of the old warrior families overthrown by men of more humble birth who fought and schemed their way to power.
In 1483 Yoshimasa built the Ginkaku, the famous Silver Pavilion, in the hilly area known as Higashiyama on the east side of Kyoto and retired there, patronizing the arts of the No drama and the tea ceremony and helping to create the ideals known in the vocabulary of Japanese aesthetics as sabi and yugeti. He built what is probably the first real tea ceremony room, the Dojin- sai, anti in other w'ays left a profound imprint on the development of Japanese culture. From the location of his villa, the distinctive culture associated with the time of Yoshimasa has come to be called Higashiyama culture. Though occurring in a time of unrest and conflict, the Higashiyama culture is looked upon as being one of the high points of the Ashikaga shogunate.
In 1464, however, Yoshimasa's wife, Tomiko, gave birth to a son, named Yoshihisa, and set about working to have him made heir, enlisting the assistance of the powerful feudal leader Yamana Sozen.