yatsu Uesugi and
Yamanouchi Uesugi, after the names of the palaces where their
mansions were situated--both of whom held the office of kwanryo
hereditarily.

These Uesugi families soon engaged in hostile rivalry, and the
Ogigayatsu branch, being allied with Ota Dokwan, the founder of Yedo
Castle, gained the upper hand, until the assassination of Dokwan,
when the Yamanouchi became powerful. It was at this time--close of
the fifteenth century--that there occurred in the Horigoe house one
of those succession quarrels so common since the Onin era. Ashikaga
Masatomo, seeking to disinherit his eldest son, Chachamaru, in favour
of his second son, Yoshimichi, was killed by the former, the latter
taking refuge with the Imagawa family in Suruga, by whom he was
escorted to the capital, where he became the Muromachi shogun under
the name of Yoshizumi. Parricides and fratricides were too common in
that disturbed age for Chachamaru's crime to cause any moral
commotion. But it chanced that among the rear vassals of the Imagawa
there was one, Nagauji, who, during many years, had harboured designs
of large ambition. Seizing the occasion offered by Chachamaru's
crime, he constituted himself Masatomo's avenger, and marching into
Izu, destroyed the Horigoe mansion, and killed Chachamaru. Then
(1491) Nagauji quietly took possession of the province of Izu,
building for himself a castle at Hojo. He had no legal authority of
any kind for the act, neither command from the Throne nor commission
from the shogun.

ENGRAVING: HOJO SOUN

It was an act of unqualified usurpation. Yet its perpetrator showed
that he had carefully studied all the essentials of stable
government--careful selection of official instruments; strict
administration of justice; benevolent treatment of the people, and
the practice of frugality. Being descended from the Taira of Ise and
having occupied the domains long held by the Hojo, he adopted the uji
name of "Hojo," and having extended his conquests to Sagami province,
built a strong castle at Odawara. He is often spoken of as Soun, the
name he adopted in taking the tonsure, which step did not in any
degree interfere with his secular activities. A profoundly skilled
tactician, he never met with a military reverse, and his fame
attracted adherents from many provinces. His instructions to his son
Ujitsuna were characteristic. Side by side with an injunction to hold
himself in perpetual readiness for establishing the Hojo