Muromachi period

Takauji issued his basic policy, the Kenmu Shikimoku, in 1336 and received the title of shōgun in 1338 – the two dates used for the start of the period. The Northern Court in Kyoto, backed by the Ashikaga, and the Southern Court in Yoshino fought intermittently until 1392, when Yoshimitsu negotiated the reunification. Modern Japan, following a decision of 1911, regards the Southern Court as the legitimate line, although the present imperial family descends from the Northern Court.

The shogunate governed through a council of powerful military governors (shugo), who became regional lords (shugo daimyō) with their own armies. Yoshimitsu built his Palace of Flowers in the Muromachi district in 1378, accepted the title 'King of Japan' from the Ming emperor to open official trade, and retired to his Kitayama villa, today's Golden Pavilion. His successors struggled to keep the great lords in check; the sixth shōgun, Yoshinori, was assassinated by one of them in 1441. A succession dispute in the shōgun's family and among leading houses erupted in the Ōnin War (1467–1477), which left much of Kyoto in ruins and marked the start of the Sengoku, or Warring States, period. From then on the shōguns were largely figureheads; in 1573 Oda Nobunaga expelled the last of them, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, from Kyoto.

The Muromachi period saw a remarkable growth of self-organisation from below. Farming villages formed self-governing communities (sō) with their own assemblies and rules, and rose in leagues (ikki) to demand debt cancellation, beginning with the great uprising of 1428. In Yamashiro province local warriors and farmers expelled the military governor's armies in 1485 and governed themselves for eight years; in Kaga province, in present-day Ishikawa, followers of the Jōdo Shinshū 'Single-minded' sect (Ikkō-shū) overthrew the governor in 1488 and ruled the province for almost a century.

At the same time the old estate system disintegrated, and the military governors were displaced by their own deputies and local warriors. By the sixteenth century most of the country was divided among Sengoku daimyō – warlords who ruled their domains directly, issued their own house laws, surveyed land and built castle towns. This process, called gekokujō ('the low overthrowing the high'), was the social engine of the Warring States era.

Despite political turmoil the economy grew. Agricultural output rose with double and even triple cropping, improved irrigation using water wheels and new crops; commerce flourished with regular markets, guilds (za) under the protection of nobles and temples, moneylenders who were often sake brewers, and transport operators along rivers and roads. Copper coins imported from Ming China, such as the Eiraku tsūhō, became the standard currency.

Official trade with Ming China under the tally system (kangō bōeki), begun by Yoshimitsu in 1404, brought silk, porcelain, books and coins; Japan exported copper, sulphur, swords and folding fans. Pirate bands known as wakō, of Japanese and other origins, raided the coasts of Korea and China. Port towns prospered, above all Sakai near Osaka, governed by a council of wealthy merchants, and Hakata in Kyushu.

Rinzai Zen was closely allied with the shogunate. The Five Mountains (gozan) system ranked the great Zen monasteries of Kyoto and Kamakura – among them Tenryū-ji, Shōkoku-ji and Nanzen-ji – and their monks served as advisers, diplomats and the leading scholars of Chinese learning. Outside this official network, monasteries such as Daitoku-ji and Myōshin-ji cultivated a stricter practice; the eccentric monk Ikkyū Sōjun of Daitoku-ji became a popular figure.

Among ordinary people the Jōdo Shinshū expanded dramatically under Rennyo (1415–1499), whose pastoral letters and congregations turned it into a mass movement with political power. The Nichiren school spread among Kyoto's townspeople. In 1549 the Jesuit Francis Xavier landed at Kagoshima, beginning the Christian mission in Japan.

Art historians distinguish the Kitayama culture of Yoshimitsu's time, rich and eclectic, named after his villa with the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji), and the Higashiyama culture of the eighth shōgun Yoshimasa, more restrained, centred on his retreat with the Silver Pavilion (Ginkaku-ji). Under Yoshimitsu's patronage the actors Kan'ami and his son Zeami refined sarugaku into Noh, and Zeami's treatises laid down its aesthetics of yūgen, subtle and mysterious beauty. Kyōgen comic plays developed alongside.

The Higashiyama period gave rise to the shoin style of architecture – tatami-matted rooms with an alcove (tokonoma), staggered shelves and sliding doors – that became the model of the Japanese interior. Ink painting reached its peak in the work of Sesshū Tōyō, who studied in China. Dry landscape gardens (karesansui) of rock and raked gravel were created at Zen temples such as Ryōan-ji and Daisen-in, flower arrangement took shape as ikebana, and the tea gatherings of Murata Jukō began the tradition of wabi tea that would culminate in the next period. Linked verse (renga), perfected by the poet Sōgi, was a favourite social art.

In 1543 Portuguese traders on a Chinese junk landed on the island of Tanegashima, south of Kyushu, and introduced the matchlock arquebus. Within a few decades Japanese smiths in Sakai, Kunitomo and elsewhere were producing firearms in large numbers, transforming warfare. Jesuit missionaries followed, beginning with Francis Xavier in 1549, and the 'Nanban' trade with Portuguese ships brought Chinese silk, European goods and Christianity to western Japan, setting the stage for the unification wars of the following period.

Much of what is seen as quintessentially Japanese – the tatami room with its alcove, Noh theatre, the tea gathering, the Zen rock garden, ink painting and ikebana – took shape in the Muromachi period, often through the mingling of warrior patrons, Zen monks and artists of humble origin. Kyoto's temples of this age form a large part of its World Heritage property.

Politically the period demonstrated the fragility of a shogunate without a solid economic and military base. The fragmentation of the Sengoku era, and the new military and economic forces it unleashed, prepared the ground for the unifiers Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu.