Socialism in
such a genial form appealed not only to the masses but also to bushi
who had pledged their property as security for loans to meet warlike
outlays or the demands of luxurious extravagance.

Alike in the home provinces and in distant Kaga, Noto, Etchu, and the
south, tokusei riots took place. Notably incompatible with any
efficient exercise of Muromachi authority was the independence which
the provincial magnates had now learned to display. They levied what
taxes they pleased; employed the proceeds as seemed good to them;
enacted and administered their own laws; made war or peace as they
wished, and granted estates or revenues to their vassals at will. In
short, the bushi had gradually constructed for themselves a full suit
of feudal garments, and to bring them once again under the effective
control of the sovereign or the shogun was almost a hopeless task.
Yoshihisa might perhaps have refrained from attempting it had the
empire been at peace. But, in truth, the empire was on the threshold
of a century-long struggle compared with which the Onin War proved a
bagatelle. The mutterings of the coming storm made themselves very
audible during the years of Yoshihisa's early manhood. The Uesugi
septs, and the Hojo and the Satomi, were fighting in the Kwanto; the
western provinces, the central provinces, and Kyushu were the scenes
of constant conflicts, and no prospect of tranquillity presented
itself. Yoshihisa determined to undertake the work of subjugating the
whole country as Yoritomo had done effectually and as Takauji had
done partially. But he died in his twenty-fifth year when engaged in
conducting a campaign against the Rokkaku branch of the Sasaki
family, in Omi province; a campaign which but for his death would
certainly have been successful.

YOSHITANE

Yoshihisa, whose death took place in 1489, left no son, and his
father, the ex-shogun Yoshimasa, made tardy atonement to his brother,
Yoshimi, the sometime priest, by obtaining the high office of shogun
for the latter's son, Yoshitane, a youth of twenty-five. In the
following year Yoshimasa died, and, two years later (1492), Yoshitane
placed himself at the head of an army to resume the Omi campaign
which Yoshihisa's death had interrupted. His opponent was of Minamoto
lineage, head of the Rokkaku branch of the Sasaki family, whose
representative in the days of the Kamakura Bakufu had been high
constable of four provinces, Omi, Izumo, Aki, and Iwami.