Locational Pedigree and Warrior Status in Medieval Kyoto: The Residences of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu

Abstract

Exploring the specific means by which Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408) came to dominate the most elite circles of traditional authority provides us with important clues about the nature of warrior ascendancy in premodern Japan. Scholars have considered uses of religious symbolism, various kinds of artistic patronage, and, of course, violent coercion. This essay seeks to introduce the significance of location as yet another means by which warriors, Yoshimitsu in particular, sought to elevate their status. There was a clear relationship between location and status in premodern Kyoto and Yoshimitsu carefully exploited it for the sake of advancing his political career. How plots of land had been used in the past and who had used them appear to have contributed to notions about a site's ‘locational pedigree’. Acquiring and occupying sites that possess elite locational pedigree enabled Yoshimitsu to emulate outstanding historical figures and, in so doing, elevate his own status. In terms of its potential to empower, location, it is argued, might well be categorized along with ceremony, language, and architecture as a key performative element that was employed and deployed in premodern Japan to authenticate social standing.

Notes

¹See Gay, ‘Muromachi Bakufu Rule in Kyoto’, and Grossberg, Japan's Renaissance.

²For biographical research on Yoshimitsu, see Satō, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, and Usui, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu.

³For representative work on the use of religious symbolism, see Ruppert, Jewel in the Ashes. On artistic patronage, see Elison and Bardwell, Warlords, Artists, and Commoners, and Pitelka, Handmade Culture. Work on violent coercion is too numerous to list here.

⁴I am coining the term ‘locational pedigree’, but Japanese scholars with whom I have discussed this theme have used the term ‘tochi no kioku’, meaning ‘land memory’.

⁵Representative scholarship includes Varley, ‘Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and the World of Kitayama’, especially 200–202, and Kurokawa, ‘Chōtei to bakufu’.

⁶On Chinese capital cosmology and geomancy, see Shatzman Steinhardt, Chinese Imperial City Planning, especially chapter 1. On Kyoto, see McCullough, ‘The Capital and its Society’, especially 97–116, and Hall, ‘Kyoto as Historical Background’. In Japanese, see Takahashi, ‘Muromachi-ki Kyōto no kūkan kōzō to shakai’, 4–5, and several relevant chapters in Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vols 1–3.

⁷Kurokawa, ‘Chōtei to bakufu’, 46.

⁸While there is no scholarship on this theme specifically, it is discussed generally in several works including, for example, Nishiyama, Toshi Heian-kyō and Takahashi, Rakuchū-rakugai.

⁹The Muromachi palace appears in documents variously as Muromachi-dono (), Hananogosho (), and Muromachi-dai ().

¹⁰Fewer than half the 12 Ashikaga shoguns who suceeded Yoshimitsu lived or worked at the Muromachi palace. The fact that all of them, nevertheless, retained the title ‘Lord of Muromachi’, regardless of their residential whereabouts, is indicative of the defining role Yoshimitsu played within the shogunate's 237-year history.

¹¹On Kamigyō's development and character, see Takahashi et al., eds, Zushū Nihon toshi-shi, 86–87.

¹²For a detailed history of the Imadegawa-dono, see Kawakami, Nihon chūsei jūtaku no kenkyū, 229–244.

¹³See Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 3, 45–46; Nochikagami, vol. 2, 105–106; and entry for ‘Muromachi gosho ato’ in Shimonaka, Kyōto-shi no chimei, 567.

¹⁴Ashikaga Tadayoshi paid Sukō-in a visit at site (1) on Kannō 2 (1351)/3/29. See entry for this date in Tōin, Entairyaku vol. 3, 442. The plot of land appears in documents variously as ‘Imadegawa-dono’, ‘Kikutei’ (‘Chrysanthemum Residence’), and ‘Kitakōji-tei’ (‘Residence on Kitakōji street’).

¹⁵Yoshiakira invited imperial regent (kanpaku) Nijō Yoshimoto to his ‘Kami-gosho’ (upper palace) located at Kikutei on Jōji 6 (1367)/7/12. See entry for this date in Nakahara, Moromori-ki, vol. 10, 20. Yoshiakira died soon thereafter, on 1367/12/7.

¹⁶Entry for Eikyō 3 (1367)/11/26 (pages 554–555 of compilation) in Kadenokōji, Arimorikyō-ki, reports Sukō-in's visit to the Hana-tei property upon his hearing it was to be made a sentō-gosho following Yoshiakira's death.

¹⁷Move occurred on Jōji 7 (1368)/2/5, mentioned in Konoe, Gukan-ki (entry for 1/29), cited in Tōkyō daigaku shiryō hensan-jo, Dai Nihon shiryō, vol. 6, no. 29, 101; also in entry for Jōji 7/2/5 in Sūryaku, cited in Dai Nihon shiryō, vol. 6, no. 29, 110–112, and discussed in Kawakami, Nihon chūsei jūtaku no kenkyū, 339, note 4.

¹⁸Entry for Ōan 2 (1369)/1/16 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 1, 192–195.

¹⁹Kawakami, Nihon chūsei jūtaku no kenkyū, 335.

²⁰Entry for Eiwa 4 (1378)/3/10 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 2, 259. The move is also mentioned in entries for the same days in Konoe, Goshinshin-in kanpaku-ki and Ashikaga-ke kan'i-ki.

²¹Entry for Ōan 2 (1369)/1/16 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 1, 192–195.

²²Entry for Eiwa 4 (1378)/3/24 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 2, 261. The reception marking numerous court promotions was held on 8/27 (Gogumai-ki, vol. 2, 270–271).

²³The haiga was eventually postponed to Kōryaku 1 (1379)/7/25. See this date's entry in Gogumai-ki, vol. 3, 19.

²⁴Entry for Eiwa 4 (1378)/3/27 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 2, 261.

²⁵See Kuroita, Kugyō bunin, vol. 2, 624.

²⁷See entries for Kōryaku 1 (1379)/6/24 in Kadenokōji, Arimorikyō-ki, 555, Ashikaga-ke kan'i-ki, 272, and Buke nendai-ki, 108.

²⁶Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 3, 19.

²⁸Entry for Eiwa 3 (1377)/2/18 in Sanjō, Gogumai-ki, vol. 2, 235.

²⁹On the relationship between status and gate styles in this period, see Kawamoto, ‘Kizoku jūtaku’, 8–10.

³⁰Entry for Kōryaku 1 (1379)/6/25 in Kaei sandai-ki, 103.

³¹Concert held on Kōryaku 1 (1379)/7/6, see Konoe, Goshinshin-in kanpaku-ki, quoted in Nochikagami, vol. 35, 123.

³²See ibid. for earliest known reference to Yoshimitsu as ‘Muromachi-dono’.

³³Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 3, 45, and various other commentaries on the palace. The actual area of the imperial palace proper only covered one half of a city block until it was expanded to a whole block in 1402. See Kawakami, Nihon chūsei jūtaku no kenkyū, 274.

³⁴Kurokawa, ‘Chōtei to bakufu’, 46.

³⁵Stavros, ‘Building Warrior Legitimacy in Medieval Kyoto’.

³⁶ Kaei sandai-ki, 97.

³⁷Ibid., 98, and also mentioned in Nochikagami, vol. 2, 101.

³⁸Konoe, Gukan-ki, vol. 7, 80.

³⁹ Kaei sandai-ki, 102. The coup that ousted Yoriyuki and installed Shiba Yoshimasa as kanrei is known as Kōryaku no seihen.

⁴⁰See Odawara-ki, quoted in Shiryō sōran, vol. 7, 92.

⁴¹Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 3, 56.

⁴²Directive issued from Yoshimitsu to Shun'oku included in Rokuō-in monjo, quoted in Imaeda, Chūsei Zenshū shi no kenkyū, 277. On the reorganization of the Gozan system, see Collcutt, Five Mountains, 119–123.

⁴³ Sakayuku hana, vol. 3, 515.

⁴⁴Imatani, Muromachi no ōken. In English, see Imatani's ‘Not for Lack of Will or Wile’, 45–78.

⁴⁵On the rule by retired emperors, see Motoki, Insei-ki seiji-shi kenkyū.

⁴⁶Yoshimitsu visited Kitayama with Gokōgon in 1378/10/22 and 1380/5/18. He acquired the property in 1397.

⁴⁷See Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 3, 49.

⁴⁸See Ōta, ‘Muromachi bakufu no tsuizen butsuji ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu’, 54–55.

⁴⁹Quote from the journal of imperial regent Ichijō Tsunetsugu, cited in Rokuonji, Rokuon, 25.

⁵⁰For details on the honorifics Yoshimitsu required, see citation from Kōyō-ki, in Rokuonji, Rokuon, 65. On 1401/12/1, a kagura dance/ritual was held at Kitayama, set to reoccur annually. Onkagura zakki reports that the event was carried out ‘as if it were the wish of the retired emperor’ (Sentō no gogan ni junjiru koto). See Rokuon, 25 for reference.

⁵¹See excerpt from Shōkokuji no tō kuyō-ki in Tomishima, ‘Shōkokuji shichijū no tō’, 41.

⁵²On the topic of imitation of Shirakawa, see Takahashi, ‘Nihon chūsei no ōto’, 23.

⁵³Rokuonji, Rokuon, 23.

⁵⁴See Takahashi Yasuo's entry in Sawamura, et al., Shin kenchiku gaku taikei, vol 2: Nihon Kenchiku-shi, 302. Some yet unpublished scholarship refutes this argument.

⁵⁵Entry for Ōei 16 (1409)/3/22 in Tokitsugu, Noritoki kyō-ki, vol. 3, 99.

⁵⁶Rokuonji, Rokuon, 25 explains how Shiba Yoshimasa opposed and eventually stopped the posthumous granting of the honorific. Yoshimitsu's mentor, Ichijō Tsunetsugu, scorns the obsequiousness displayed by the nobility, including himself, toward Yoshimitsu. See Ichijō's Kōryaku, entry for Ōei 2/7/5, cited in Kyōto-shi, Kyōto no rekishi, vol. 3, 57.

⁵⁷See two works by Imatani Akira, Muromachi no ōken, and ‘Not for Lack of Will or Wile’.

⁵⁸For specific indications, see Abe, et al., Heian jidai gishiki nenchū gyōji jiten.

⁵⁹Kyōto-shi, Heian kento 1200 nen kinen, Yomigaeru Heian-kyō, 20.

⁶⁰Totman, Politics of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 35. Also, Berry, Japan in Print, 113.

⁶¹Coaldrake, ‘Edo Architecture and Tokugawa Law’.

⁶²See section 5 of Takahashi, et al., Zushū Nihon toshi-shi, 157–186.