Page 16 - JAPAN THE SHAPING OFDAIMYO CULTURE 1185-1868

third shogun, were able to assert shogunal authority over the shugo. Himeji Castle, interior view. Photograph
Under weaker mid-fifteenth-century shoguns like Ashikaga Yoshimasa by Mike Yamashita. Copyright © 1988,
(1436-1490), however, these constables, or shugo daimyo, extended their National Geographic Society.
local power at the expense of the shogunate, tightening their feudal
control over their provinces of assignment and enrolling local warriors as
their vassals.
A second stage of daimyo evolution was set in motion_when, in
the fierce provincial warfare following the outbreak of the Onin War
(1467-1477) the shogun-s/zugo coalition disintegrated in civil war and
many of the shugo-daimyo, who were militarily overextended or entan-
gled in politics in the capital, were toppled by their own deputies and
retainers, who emerged as the rulers of smaller but more tightly-knit
domains. These 250 or so warrior families were known as the daimyo of
the Warring Provinces, sengoku daimyo. Fiercely independent, they
sought to ensure survival in an age of privincial warfare by extending
their feudal control over all the warriors, merchants, and peasants within
their territories, and by mobilizing all the human and economic re-
sources of the domain for attack and defense. The Ashikaga shogunate
and the imperial court both survived, but shogunal power did not extend
far beyond Kyoto. The imperial court was too impoverished and politi-
cally impotent to assert any authority. This period of sengoku daimyo
development, between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries,
marked the extreme of political decentralization in Japan. This decen-
tralization was hastened by the weakness of the shogunal leadership and
by the rivalry of warring daimyo. Shugo- and sengoku daimyo houses rose
and fell with bewildering rapidity. Very few of the medieval daimyo
families survived into the late sixteenth century, the beginning of the
early modern age, kinsei, in Japan. Among the survivors were the Shi-
mazu family of Satsuma (Kagoshima), the Mori of Chóshü (Yamaguchi
Prefecture), and the Hosokawa, whose fortunes were revived in the six-
teenth century by members of a collateral line.

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