| abstract | - The Ashikaga were a samurai family from Kamakura having blood ties with the Seiwa Genji, Minamoto no Yoritomo's clan. Unlike his brother Takauji, Tadayoshi didn't take part in the Kamakura shogunate's political life until the Genkō War (1331–1333), a civil war whose conclusion (the Siege of Kamakura (1333)) marks the end of the Kamakura period and the beginning of the most turbulent period in Japan's history, the Muromachi era. Like his brother, Tadayoshi resolutely abandoned the Kamakura shogunate to ally himself with Emperor Go-Daigo during the Kemmu Restoration of 1333. When Go-Daigo had ascended to the throne in 1318, he had immediately manifested his intention to rule without interference from the military in Kamakura. The samurai class as a whole however was not ready to give away power, so the alliance between him and the Ashikaga was bound to be only temporary. Go-Daigo wanted to re-establish his rule in Kamakura and the east of the country without sending there a shogun, as this was seen, just a year from the fall of its shogunate, as still too dangerous. As a compromise, he sent his six-year-old son Prince Norinaga to Mutsu province (in today's Aomori region) and nominated him Governor-General of the Mutsu and Dewa provinces. In an obvious reply to this move, Tadayoshi, without an order from the Emperor escorted another of his sons, eleven-year-old Prince Nariyoshi (a.k.a. Narinaga) to Kamakura, where he installed him as Governor of the Kōzuke province with himself as a deputy and de facto ruler. The appointment of a warrior to such an important post was intended to show the Emperor that the samurai class was not ready for a purely civilian rule. Since he ruled without interference from Kyoto and the area in itself was in effect a miniature shogunate, this event can be considered the beginning of the Ashikaga shogunate. In 1335, during the Nakasendai Rebellion led by Hōjō Tokiyuki Tadayoshi, being unable to defend the city, had to leave Kamakura in a rush. Not being in the position to take along another son of Go-Daigo's, Prince Morinaga, whom he had kept as a hostage for several months, rather than letting him go he decided to have him beheaded. Turning against Go-Daigo, Tadayoshi and Takauji set up a rival emperor in 1336 and founded the Muromachi shogunate in 1338. Dividing power between them, Takauji took charge of military affairs and Tadayoshi of judicial and administrative matters. Both Tadayoshi and Takauji were disciples of famous Zen master, intellectual and garden designer Musō Soseki, under which guidance the first would later become a Buddhist monk. It was partly because of Soseki's influence that the pre-existing Five Mountain System network of Zen temples was expanded and strengthened, first with the establishment of the Jissetsu, and later with that of the Ankoku-ji temple sub-networks. The creation of both systems is generally attributed wholly to Tadayoshi. It was also Soseki which famously wrote about the two brothers, describing Takauji as more apt to military pursuits, and Tadayoshi to government.
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