FIELD REPORTS
The Death of Yoshihisa: In 1489, the Child the Mother Made Shōgun Perished on Campaign
Ashikaga Yoshihisa, whom his mother Tomiko had placed in the shōgun's seat by her obsession, died of illness at twenty-five while on campaign to Ōmi. To Tomiko, who had not shrunk even from the disgrace of a wicked woman for her child's sake, what was left was only the grief of a mother outliving her son.
In the third month of 1489 (Chōkyō 3), at the Magari camp in Ōmi (the area of present-day Rittō City, Shiga Prefecture).
The ninth shōgun Ashikaga Yoshihisa, in the camp of a campaign to strike the Rokkaku of Ōmi who would not obey the shogunate, fell ill and departed the world.
He was twenty-five — the very child his mother Hino Tomiko had placed in the shōgun's seat, not shrinking from becoming the tinder of the Ōnin War, nor from being cursed as a wicked woman.
That child died before his mother. The end to which Tomiko's obsession had come was a conclusion far too empty.
The Shōgun the Mother Wished For
Yoshihisa became the ninth shōgun in 1473, at only nine years old. It was the moment his mother Tomiko's wish was at last granted.
To make her child shōgun, Tomiko had become one party to the Ōnin War and had borne the disgrace of hoarding.
All of it was to place Yoshihisa in this seat and let the Ashikaga shogunal house be continued by her child's blood.
One mother's passion had pushed a young boy to the summit of the realm.
The Shōgun's Personal Campaign
Grown, Yoshihisa led in person the subjugation of Rokkaku Takayori of Ōmi, seeking to recover the shōgun's authority fallen to the ground.
In 1487, Yoshihisa set out for Ōmi at the head of a great army. But the campaign dragged on, and no results came.
Yoshihisa in camp is transmitted to have drowned in drink and women, and gradually ruined his body.
The very child his mother had poured her heart's blood into making shōgun sank his young body into illness, at the end of that heavy burden and dissipation.
The Mother Left Behind
In 1489, Yoshihisa closed his life at the Magari camp at twenty-five. It was the far-too-empty conclusion of the obsession and disgrace Tomiko had borne.
The mother's wish, for which she had become the tinder of the war, been cursed as a miser, and yet held fast, was torn out by the root by that child's too-early death.
Tomiko afterward remained involved in the elevation of her nephews Yoshitane and Yoshizumi, living on amid the shogunate's disorder.
But the grief of a mother who had lost her child was beyond filling. In 1496, Tomiko departed the world.
"To make Yoshihisa shōgun, I did not care though I was cursed as a demon. And now, outlived by that child — what is left?"
PRIMARY SOURCES & ARCHIVES
- PRIMARY
Daijōin Jisha Zōjiki
The diary of Jinson, recording Yoshihisa's personal campaign and death
- SCHOLARSHIP
The Ōnin War
Goza Yūichi / Chūkō Shinsho
Examines the Yoshihisa regime and Tomiko's last years
- ARCHIVE
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