Ashikaga Takauji
Ashikaga Takauji founded the second shogunate of Japan after betraying the emperor who had employed him. Born in 1305 into a branch of the Minamoto clan, he was a senior vassal of the Hōjō regents who governed through the Kamakura shogunate. In 1333 Emperor Go-Daigo rose against the Hōjō, and Takauji was sent to suppress him. He changed sides instead, attacked and destroyed the shogunate's headquarters at Kyoto, and with Nitta Yoshisada's capture of Kamakura brought the Kamakura regime down. Go-Daigo attempted to restore direct imperial rule in the Kenmu Restoration, distributing rewards to court nobles rather than to the warriors who had fought, and refusing Takauji the title of shogun. The warrior class turned against it within two years. Takauji broke with the emperor in 1335, occupied Kyoto, was driven out to Kyushu, and returned with a larger force. He defeated the imperial loyalists at Minatogawa in 1336, where Kusunoki Masashige died — a defeat that made Masashige the model of doomed loyalty in Japanese tradition and left Takauji cast as the traitor. He installed a rival emperor from the northern line, obtained the title of shogun in 1338, and established his government in the Muromachi district of Kyoto. Go-Daigo escaped south to Yoshino and maintained a rival court, beginning the Nanboku-chō period of two competing imperial lines that lasted fifty-six years. His shogunate delegated much power to provincial military governors, who grew into the daimyo of later centuries, and it was never as secure as its Kamakura predecessor. He fought his own brother Tadayoshi in the Kannō disturbance, and died in 1358.
- Lived: 1305 CE – 1358 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: shogun
