Muromachi period

What the Muromachi period means

The Muromachi period is the division of Japanese history that runs from the founding of the Ashikaga shogunate in Kyoto in the 1330s to 1573, when the fifteenth shogun, Ashikaga Yoshiaki, was driven from the city by Oda Nobunaga and the shogunate effectively ended. The name comes from the Muromachi district of Kyoto, where the third shogun, Yoshimitsu, built his residence. The start is dated either to 1336, when the new regime issued its founding code, or to 1338, when Ashikaga Takauji was appointed shogun.

For roughly its first sixty years the imperial court was split between a Northern Court in Kyoto and a Southern Court in Yoshino, and this phase is usually separated out as the Nanbokuchō period. In the narrower sense the Muromachi period begins with the reunification of the courts in 1392, and its later part, after the Onin War of 1467 to 1477, overlaps with what is called the Warring States period. It follows the Kamakura period and is followed by the Azuchi-Momoyama period.

For cultural properties the period gave new weight to residences, gardens and Zen culture. The Silver Pavilion at Jishoji, built in 1489, has a lower storey arranged as a dwelling with strong elements of the Shoin-zukuri style and an upper storey fitted out as a Buddhist hall in the Zenshūyō manner, showing residential and religious design being combined. Temple builders across the country produced eclectic halls that absorbed Zen-style and Daibutsuyō details into the older Wayō tradition.

How the period appears in records

The Nanbokuchō phase is treated differently in different records. The period divisions of Cultural Heritage Online list Nanbokuchō and Muromachi separately, and records for art objects follow them. Building records in the national database, however, date by early, middle and late Muromachi and can place a building of the Nanbokuchō years in early Muromachi. The five-storey pagoda of Myooin is dated to 1348 by an inscription on its finial base, yet its period field reads early Muromachi.

As a result, a sculpture or painting and a building of the same mid-fourteenth-century date may be entered as Nanbokuchō and as early Muromachi respectively. Articles should follow the value in the record and not convert it to the scheme of a different kind of record. When Japanese era names are given, note that during the Nanbokuchō years the two courts used different era names at the same time, so it is worth checking which court's era a record or inscription uses; the era of the Myooin inscription is a Northern Court one.