Samurai ArchiveBUSHI ARCHIVE INDEX

1336–1467

Nanboku-chō

The Northern and Southern Courts (1336-1467) — two rival imperial lines split Japan and the warrior class consolidated regional power.

-- 1 SUBJECTS ON FILE

SUBJECTS IN THIS ERA

SA-0025 / 1305
Ashikaga Takauji
The founding shogun who left Japan with two emperors and a sixty-year civil war

REPORTS FROM THIS ERA

Two Emperors at Once: How Ashikaga Takauji Split Japan for Sixty Years
In 1336, in his attempt to legitimize his own shogunate, Ashikaga Takauji installed a rival emperor in Kyoto while the original emperor fled to Yoshino. Japan had two parallel imperial lines for the next fifty-six years. The political architecture of that split shaped the country into the Sengoku.

ERAS