Some ancient families disappeared altogether and were replaced by men who had once fought for them but now sought their own local power through war, intrigue, marriage, or murder. It was as if the powerful pre-Shogun landowners of ancient times had been reborn, and throughout Japan there was a scramble for territory. With such a vacuum lying at the heart of Japanese politics, many samurai warriors took the opportunity provided by the Onin War to develop their own local autonomy in a way that had not been seen for centuries. Yoshimasa’s cultural achievements were many, but the power of the Shogunate declined as never before. He also built the Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion) in an attempt to emulate an illustrious ancestor who had built a pavilion of gold, but such was the current poverty of the Shogunate that it was never covered in silver. ![]() Instead, Yoshimasa contented himself with artistic pursuits, and was in fact one of the early devotees of the tea ceremony. The Shogun at the time was Ashikaga Yoshimasa, who was totally unable to prevent the slide into anarchy. The resulting Onin War, named from the conventional year period in which it happened, was fought largely around Kyoto, Japan’s capital city, and even in its streets of Kyoto itself, which were soon reduced to being vague boundaries amid a smoking wasteland. Several rebellions did take place against the rule of the Shogun over the next few centuries, but all were quelled successfully until 1467, when a quarrel between two samurai houses developed into a military and political disaster. Following the Battle of Dan no Ura in 1185 Minamoto Yoritomo became Japan’s first Shogun or military dictator In his place now ruled the Shogun or military dictator. The samurai warriors were a distinctive social class and their establishment as a ruling elite during the 12th century, when the Battle of Dan no Ura in 1185 concluded a bitter time of clan rivalry and reduced the emperor to being a mere figurehead. ![]() Japan, the home of the samurai, had been no stranger to war since the time of the rise of the samurai warrior.
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