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Onin War
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The was a civil war from 1467 to 1477 during the Muromachi period in Japan. A dispute between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen escalated into a nationwide war involving the Ashikaga shogunate and a number of daimyo in many regions of Japan.
The war initiated the Sengoku jidai, "the Warring States Period".
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The was a civil war from 1467 to 1477 during the Muromachi period in Japan. A dispute between Hosokawa Katsumoto and Yamana Sozen escalated into a nationwide war involving the Ashikaga shogunate and a number of daimyo in many regions of Japan.
The war initiated the Sengoku jidai, "the Warring States Period". This period was a long, drawn-out struggle for domination by individual daimyo, resulting in a mass power-struggle between the various houses to dominate the whole of Japan. It was during this time, though, that there would emerge three individuals who would later be considered the three great daimyo of the Sengoku Period, and who would eventually unite Japan under one rule; they were Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Battles
By July 1467 the fighting had become serious, and this was when the Onin War is said to have started. By September, Kyoto's northern parts were in ruins, and everyone who could flee from Kyoto did so.
Both Yamana Sozen and Hosokawa Katsumoto died in 1473, and even then, the war continued on, neither side figuring out how to end the war. However, eventually the Yamana clan lost heart as the label of "rebel" was at last having some effect. Ouchi Masahiro, one of the Yamana generals, eventually burnt down his section of Kyoto and left the area. By 1477, ten years after the fighting had begun, Kyoto was nothing more than a place for mobs to loot and move in to take what was left. Neither the Yamana clan nor the Hosokawa clan had achieved its aims, other than to whittle down the numbers of the opposing clan.
During this whole ordeal, the shogun was not instrumental in alleviating the situation. While Kyoto was burning, Ashikaga Yoshimasa spent his time in poetry readings and other cultural activities, and in planning Ginkaku-ji, a Silver Pavilion to rival Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, that his grandfather, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu, had built.
The Onin War, and the shogun’s complacent attitude towards it, "sanctioned" private wars and skirmishes between the other daimyo. No part of Japan escaped the violence. Although the battles in Kyoto had been abandoned, the war had spread to the rest of Japan. In Yamashiro Province, the Hatakeyama clan had split into two parts that fought each other to a standstill. This stalemate was to have serious consequences. In 1485, the peasantry and ji-samurai (lesser samurai) had had enough, and revolted. Setting up their own army (the 'Ikki'), they forced the clan armies to leave the province. The Ikki became a powerful force, much more than simply an armed mob. By 1486 they had even set up a provisional government for Yamashiro province.
The Ikki would form and appear throughout other parts of Japan, such as Kaga Province, where a sect of the Jodo Shinshu Buddhists, the Ikko, started their own revolt during the Onin War after being enlisted by one of Kaga's most prominent warlords, Togashi Masachika. The Ikko, who had a complex relationship with the Jodo Shinshu leader Rennyo, appealed to the common peasants in their region, and inevitably formed the Ikko-ikki. By 1488 the Ikko-ikki of Kaga Province expelled Masachika and the other warlords, and took control of the province. After this they began building a fortified castle-cathedral along the Yodo River and used it as their headquarters. The Ikko-ikki and the Yamashiro-ikki were revolutionary, in a process called gekokujo ("the low oppress the high").
Aftermath
After the Onin War, the Ashikaga bakufu completely fell apart; for all practical purposes, the Hosokawa family was in charge and the Ashikaga shoguns became their puppets. When Yoshimi's son Yoshitane was made shogun in 1490, the Hosokawa Kanrei (deputy) soon put him to flight in 1493 and declared another Ashikaga, Yoshizumi, to be shogun. In 1499, Yoshitane arrived at Yamaguchi, the capital of the Ouchi, and this powerful family threw its military support behind Yoshitane. In 1507, the Kanrei Hosokawa Masamoto was assassinated and in 1508, Yoshizumi left Kyoto and the Ouchi restored the shogunate to Yoshitane. Thence began a series of strange conflicts over control of the puppet government of the shogunate. After the death of Hosokawa Matsumoto, his adopted sons Takakuni and Sumimoto began to fight over the succession to the Kanrei, but Sumimoto himself was a puppet of one of his vassals. This would characterize the wars following the Onin War; these wars were more about control over puppet governments than they were about high ideals or simply greed for territory.
The Hosokawa family would control the shogunate until 1558 when they were betrayed by a vassal family, the Miyoshi. The powerful Ouchi were also destroyed by a vassal, Mori Motonari, in 1551; by the end of the Warring States Period only a dozen or so warlord families still remained standing. But the most important development to come out of the Onin War was the ceaseless civil war that ignited outside the capital city. Hosokawa tried to foment civil strife in the Ouchi domains, for instance, and this civil strife would eventually force Ouchi to submit and leave. From the close of the Onin War, this type of civil strife, either vassals striving to conquer their daimyo or succession disputes drawing in outside daimyo, was endemic all throughout Japan.
Scholars disagree on the appropriateness of the term "Warring States Period" (which is the Chinese term borrowed by the Japanese in calling this period "sengoku jidai"). Many argue that since Japan was essentially intact, the Emperor and shogunate remaining at least nominally in command of the whole country, it really wasn't a "warring states" period at all, but a "warring warlords" period. However, others such as Mark Ravina, Mary Elizabeth Berry, and Conrad Totman argue that the kuni (provinces) were not unlike quasi-independent states, and that the term is thus more or less appropriate.
The cost for the individual daimyo was tremendous, and a century of conflict would so weaken the bulk of Japanese warlords, that the three great figures of Japanese unification, beginning with Oda Nobunaga, would find it easier to militarily assert a single, unified military government.
Onin Ki
The Onin Ki is a document written sometime from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the 16th century (i.e. some 20 to 80 years after the conflict), which describes the causes and effects of the Onin War. It illustrates in detail the strategies involved in the fighting, and its chief instigators, Yamana Sozen and Hosokawa Katsumoto.
Though it is classified as a work of historical military fiction, because of the time in which it was written, it is entirely possible that the author is relating a first person account of the conflagration. Though its author is unknown, his beliefs and philosophies are apparent throughout the text, as he relates the apparent futility of the war and the destruction it wrought on the capital. It remains an important work in part due to its departure from somewhat cut-and-dry depictions of the numerous battles, instead adding accounts of how the Onin War affected the city and its citizens:
"The capital which we believed would flourish for ten thousand years has now become a lair for the wolves. Even the North Field of Toji has fallen to ash ... Lamenting the plight of the many fallen acolytes, Ii-o Hikorokusaemon-No-Jou read a passage:
'Now the city that you know
Has become an empty field,
From which the skylark rises
And your tears fall.'"
Chronology
The origins of the Onin conflict are manifold. To say that the war began with a quarrel between angry warlords is too simplistic. The initial phase of this decade-long struggle was only spark which set fire to a broader conflagration. Without fully anticipating the consequences, the Kamakura government had loosened the restraints of tradition in Japanese society, which meant that new energies were released, new classes were formed, and new wealth was created. As the shogunate's powerful figures competed for influence in Kyoto, the leading families in the provinces were amassing resources and growing more independent of centralized controls.
Precursors
Warfare begins
- 1467 Outbreak of the Onin War. Yamana is declared a rebel. In November, the Shokokuji (:ja:???) is destroyed.
- 1468 Yoshimi goes over to Yamana's side.
- 1469 Yoshimasa names Yoshihisa his heir.
- 1471 Ikko-ikki Buddhist sect gains strength in the North. Asakura Toshikage becomes Constable (shugo) of Echizen.
- 1473 Yamana and Hosokawa die. Yoshimasa retires.
- 1477 Ouchi clan leaves Kyoto. End of the Onin War.
Sequelae
See also
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