Ashikaga Yoshimasa was the eighth shogun of the Muromachi shogunate. Politically he is judged a failure whose rule brought on the Onin War, but the Higashiyama villa he built after stepping down became the setting in which the connoisseurship of Chinese objects and the rules of room display were codified — the ground on which shoin tea took shape.
Life and career
He became shogun at eight but never held real power, and the succession dispute escalated into the Onin War (1467–1477). He passed the office to his son Yoshihisa in 1473 and began building his villa in the Higashiyama hills in 1482. There he kept the doboshu — Noami, Geiami and Soami — who set down the standards for judging Chinese objects and arranging them in the shoin as the Kundaikan sochoki. The villa became the Zen temple Jisho-ji after his death, and the Kannon-den, known today as the Silver Pavilion, took its final form around the time he died. In his lifetime the place was called the Higashiyama villa, not Ginkaku-ji.
Influence on tea
The Dojinsai, a four-and-a-half-mat study in the villa's Togudo fitted with a built-in desk and staggered shelves, is among the oldest surviving shoin rooms and is cited as the source of the four-and-a-half-mat proportion of the tea room. The grading of Chinese objects and the display conventions settled around Yoshimasa became the norms of shoin tea, and passed through Murata Juko and Takeno Joo into wabi tea. The objects he assembled are known collectively as the Higashiyama gomotsu, a term still used to mean the highest rank of tea utensil.
Legacy
Objects said to have been his form the core of the o-meibutsu, and celebrated pieces whose provenance runs back to the Ashikaga shogunal house — Hatsuhana, the foremost of the three great shouldered tea caddies, among them — remained emblems of authority throughout the early modern period. The provenance of each of the three differs, however, and not all passed through his hands. Judgements of the man remain divided, but for tea he is where the history begins.
Sources
- 足利義政（朝日日本歴史人物事典 ほか） / コトバンク
Supports: 生没年（1436–1490）と室町幕府八代将軍としての在職・事績
- 銀閣寺について / 臨済宗相国寺派 慈照寺
Supports: 東山山荘が義政の没後に慈照寺となったこと、観音殿（銀閣）と東求堂の由来
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Term info
- Life dates
- 1436–1490
- Category
- Term