5

One of Ashikaga Yoshimasa’s worst defects, at least in the eyes of his detractors, was his unbridled passion for building costly palaces. His first domicile after he became shogun in 1443 was the Karasumaru Palace, originally the home of his mother’s cousin Karasumaru Suketo. Not having been constructed as a shogun’s residence, the palace lacked adequate rooms for receiving visitors or for conducting other state functions, and the original building had to be enlarged for the shogun’s use, with adjoining pavilions that included a private study and a chapel where he might worship. Some additions were cannibalized from earlier palaces, and others were newly constructed. Yoshimasa lived for sixteen years in the Karasumaru Palace. This was where he received his education, and it probably had nostalgic associations, but as he grew older he became dissatisfied with the outmoded buildings.

At first Yoshimasa planned nothing more ambitious than a remodeling of the Karasumaru Palace. Extensive renovations were in fact made, but hardly had they been completed in 1458 than Yoshimasa decided, to the astonishment of his court, to move the buildings of the renovated Karasumaru Palace to the site of the old Muromachi Palace, familiarly known as Hana no gosho (Palace of Flowers).¹

The first Palace of Flowers had been erected on the site in 1368 as the residence of Retired Emperor Sōkū. The original building was destroyed in 1377 in a conflagration, but in 1431 Ashikaga Yoshinori built a new Palace of Flowers on the site. Parts of Yoshinori’s palace were used when the Karasumaru Palace was moved to Muromachi in 1458. Criticism of Yoshimasa’s extravagance in renovating a palace only to move it elsewhere, despite the huge costs, was privately expressed in diaries of the time, though naturally no one openly expressed opposition.²

It is not clear why Yoshimasa felt he needed to change the location of the Karasumaru Palace. Morita Kyōji, the author of a study of Yoshimasa, wrote,

Yoshimasa had his own special aesthetic sense with respect to the culture in which he lived. The locus where his aesthetic sense was given substance was invariably the palace where he resided. The embodiment of the aesthetic sensibility he displayed in the Palace of Flowers would be continued and further developed in the Higashiyama mountain retreat where he lived after his retirement.³

Perhaps Yoshimasa, believing that the Karasumaru Palace was in the taste of an earlier generation, wanted a building that would more faithfully reflect his taste. If this was in fact his attitude, it was rather unusual. When constructing new buildings, Japanese rulers were more likely to make a point of following precedents than to insist on their own preferences. It was unlikely that Yoshimasa, who all but worshiped Yoshimitsu, was consciously rebelling against his grandfather’s tastes, but perhaps without fully realizing it, he had, by the age of twenty-two, developed tastes of his own that required expression.

Construction began immediately on the new Palace of Flowers, at first using elements from the dismantled Karasumaru Palace. The ridgepole of the kaisho (reception hall) was erected in the second month of 1459, and other buildings were quickly added. In the eleventh month of that year, Yoshimasa moved into the new palace.

Contemporary diarists described in terms of wonderment the magnificence of the buildings and gardens.⁴ Although these accounts contain numerous exclamations of admiration for the surpassing skill displayed in the new palace, the details are not concrete enough for us to form a clear picture of what made the appearance of the palace seem so remarkable, but it is likely that it reflected in some way Yoshimasa’s fondness for things in the Chinese taste. For example, Unsen Taikyoku used the phrase “rare plants and curious rocks” (kika chinseki) when praising the garden, an indication that it probably was in Chinese, rather than traditional Japanese, taste.

A difference between the aesthetic ideals of the two countries was indirectly suggested by the priest Kenkō in Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness) when, after describing the flowers that he thought desirable in a gentleman’s garden, he added: “It is hard to feel affection for other plants—those rarely encountered, or which have unpleasant-sounding Chinese names, or which look peculiar. As a rule, oddities and rarities are enjoyed by persons of no breeding. It is best to be without them.”⁵ Kenkō preferred ordinary flowers to exotic plants and did not share Yoshimasa’s taste for “rare plants and curious rocks,” even though they were essential to Chinese gardens.

In 1462 Yoshimasa built the luxurious Takakura Palace for his mother, Hino Shigeko. This palace and its magnificent garden were constructed at a time when the city of Kyoto was still suffering the effects of the famine in which more than eighty thousand people died. In addition to the extravagance of building these palaces, Yoshimasa repeatedly staged elaborate and very costly parties, notably a cherry-blossom viewing in 1465.

Although many buildings were destroyed during the Ōnin War, the new Palace of Flowers miraculously survived the destruction and looting of the first (and worst) years, only to burn to the ground in 1476. Fires set in pawnshops and saké shops by rioters who had been angered by profiteering spread to the houses of the nobles and eventually to the Palace of Flowers, where the treasures of generations of shoguns went up in smoke.⁶ Yoshimasa, driven from the palace by the flames, took refuge along with his wife and his son Yoshihisa in the Kokawa Palace, a villa belonging to Hosokawa Katsumoto.

Three years earlier, in 1473, Yoshimasa had resigned from the post of shogun in favor of Yoshihisa. Affairs of state, however, remained in Yoshimasa’s hands because the new shogun was only eight years old. Yoshihisa did not stay long at the Kokawa Palace but soon moved to the house of Ise Sadamune (the heir of Sadachika), apparently after a quarrel with Yoshimasa. The precocious Yoshihisa seems to have resented his father’s refusal to yield the privileges of the office of shogun to his eleven-year-old son. As if to demonstrate that he was quite capable of performing the duties of a shogun, Yoshihisa threw himself into studying the poetry of the Heian era, and after 1480, poem competitions (utakai), carried out in strict obedience to the traditions of four hundred years earlier, were held in his presence. Courtiers who favored the cause of the young shogun eagerly participated in these contests.

In these and other studies, Yoshihisa had the benefit of the advice of Ichijō Kaneyoshi, the most distinguished scholar of the day. Kaneyoshi stressed the importance of maintaining the old court traditions. Under his influence, the shogun’s court announced plans for compiling a new, imperially sponsored collection of waka poetry. The last such collection, the twenty-first, had been compiled by Kaneyoshi in 1439. The plan for a new anthology, postponed by the war, finally was abandoned with the death of Kaneyoshi in 1481.

In 1480 Kaneyoshi presented to Yoshihisa “Shōdan chiyō” (A Woodcutter’s Talks on Good Government), intended as an introduction to politics for the young shogun. He offered his opinions on such specific matters as the extreme care that the shogun must take when appointing military governors and personal attendants, as well as more general advice on the principles of good government. With respect to religion, Kaneyoshi believed that the old Buddhism (the Nara sects, Tendai, and Shingon) was too complicated for contemporary people to understand. He advised Yoshihisa instead to combine the best parts of two more recent sects, Zen and Jōdo (Pure Land) Buddhism. Although the tenets of the two sects were in many ways antithetical, he believed there was much to be learned from both.⁷

Kaneyoshi’s advice on literary, political, and religious matters probably was beneficial to Yoshihisa, but the young man was highly strung and given to displays of temper. Relations between him and his father, and especially between the partisans of each, became increasingly hostile.⁸ Yoshihisa more than once threatened to shave his head and “leave the world” as a sign of frustration over the awkward position of being the shogun but enjoying none of the privileges. On one occasion, he cut his topknot and planned to run away, but he was restrained by Ise Sadamune and by the personal letter that Yoshimasa sent him, urging Yoshihisa to abandon his plan.⁹

In 1480 Yoshihisa took as his consort a daughter of Hino Yoshikatsu. Even during the early days of his marriage, however, he continued his affair with a woman who was a particular favorite of Yoshimasa’s, adding sexual rivalry to their political disputes.¹⁰

In the spring of 1481, Yoshimasa quarreled with his wife, Tomiko. This was not their first serious quarrel: in 1471 Tomiko had left the Muromachi Palace and gone to live with her mother. For a time, husband and wife lived apart, and after an even more violent altercation in 1481, the separation became permanent. Yoshimasa, now cut off from both wife and son by quarrels, may have felt a sense of liberation. He was free to do as he pleased.

One rainy night,¹¹ Yoshimasa secretly left the Kokawa Palace, accompanied by four or five retainers, and made his way to his mountain retreat in Iwakura, north of the capital. Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado was shocked to learn that Yoshimasa was not in the Kokawa Palace. Although he ordered him to return to the capital, Yoshimasa, paying no attention to the emperor’s command, began to make arrangements for having his head shaved and becoming a priest.¹²

Various reasons have been suggested for his decision to “leave the world” at this particular time. He had been upset ever since the Ōnin War because the military governors had ceased to pay attention to his orders. The quarrels with Tomiko and Yoshihisa had also contributed to his disenchantment with the world. He was particularly aggrieved because Yoshihisa, whom he had urged to take care of his health (meaning that he disapproved of the dissolute life Yoshihisa was leading), had ostentatiously ignored his advice. Although Yoshihisa was still only sixteen, he had become a profligate. But regardless of the reasons for taking the step at this time, Yoshimasa had for years wanted to become a monk and was looking forward to spending his declining years (he was now forty-five years old) in quiet retirement.

As far back as 1466, Yoshimasa had chosen Higashiyama, a section of the capital known for its beautiful scenery, as the site of his future retreat. He made detailed plans for the residence, using for reference the architectural drawings of one of the Konoe palaces. Arrangements were made for obtaining the necessary construction workers and building materials; but with the outbreak of the Ōnin War, Yoshimasa was deprived of much of his income, making it impossible for him to build a retreat with his usual extravagance.

Although thwarted in carrying out his plans by the war, Yoshimasa did not forget them. His move to Iwakura from the Kokawa Palace may have been planned as a intermediate stage to his final destination, the retreat in the Higashiyama hills. The land he chose belonged to the Jōdo-ji, a Tendai temple that had been founded in the Heian period but was destroyed during the Ōnin War. Ashikaga Yoshimi (known at that time as Gijin) had served as the abbot of the temple before Yoshimasa persuaded him to return to the laity.

The picturesque site of the retreat contrasted with the urban location of Yoshimasa’s earlier dwellings. Following the Chinese usage, the Japanese gave temples “mountain names” and referred to them as if they were situated on a mountainside even if they stood on flat ground in the middle of Kyoto. Yoshimasa wanted to live on a more authentic mountain, but unlike a true hermit, he sought a retreat not in the wilderness but in a place of quiet scenic beauty, not too far from the city.

Construction of the retreat was begun on the fourth day of the second month (February 21) of 1482. On the twenty-fifth of the month, Yoshimasa, taking advantage of a supposed katatagae (forbidden direction), went to inspect the preliminary construction.¹³ To pay the building costs, he had imposed levies on the military governors of various provinces, but most, aware of the shogun’s inability to enforce his orders, failed to respond. There were some exceptions among the daimyos, and a few rich families gave money, but there was not enough to cover the expenses generated by Yoshimasa’s extravagant tastes.

Yoshimasa must surely have been aware of the difficulty of raising funds at such a time, so soon after a ten-year war, but he intended to make his retreat incorporate his aesthetic conceptions as closely as possible. When military governors refused funds and workmen, Yoshimasa turned to temples, shrines, and other institutions that were normally exempt from taxation, especially to those in the region immediately surrounding the capital, the last remaining stronghold of the shogunate. Indifferent to the hardships he caused the temples and ultimately the peasants who were condemned to perform long periods of forced labor, Yoshimasa searched for “rare plants and curious rocks” to decorate his retreat.

In the eighth month of 1482, a ceremony was held to commemorate the raising of the central ridgepole of Yoshimasa’s future living quarters (tsunenogosho) at the Higashiyama retreat. The building was completed in the following year, and Yoshimasa moved in, even though construction work continued all around him. This building would be his home and refuge from the harsh realities of the world for the rest of his life. The day after Yoshimasa took up residence in his new house, Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado bestowed on it the name Higashiyama-dono. Not only the building but also Yoshimasa himself were frequently referred to by this name in documents of the period. (Yoshihisa was similarly known as Muromachi-dono, from the name of the shogunate palace where he lived.)

From this time on, Yoshimasa devoted the greatest attention to the buildings and furnishings of the Higashiyama mountain retreat and its gardens. At least ten separate buildings were planned,¹⁴ but the chronic lack of funds repeatedly delayed their completion. One unusual feature of Yoshimasa’s retreat was that unlike the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, where Yoshimitsu had conducted official functions even after entering Buddhist orders, it had no public space; it was meant for the private enjoyment of one man.

After Yoshimasa’s death, the retreat was consecrated as a Zen temple and called the Jishō-ji. (The nickname Ginkaku-ji, by which it is popularly known today, dates back to only the Edo period.) The construction was in four stages. The first stage was marked by the building of the tsunenogosho in 1483. The second stage, the Saishi-an, the hall of Zen meditation, was completed in the fourth month of 1485. The third stage, the kaisho, was completed in the eleventh month of 1487. The fourth stage, the Kannon-den (Ginkaku), was unfinished at the time of Yoshimasa’s death in 1490.¹⁵

The expenses and workmen for these constructions were at first provided by military governors and religious institutions, but contributions from domains outside the home province of Yamashiro ceased altogether after 1485, and Yoshimasa was compelled to beg rich men for financial assistance. His determination to see to completion his grand plan for the Higashiyama retreat no doubt explains his willingness to endure this humiliation. In most matters, he was weak willed and ineffectual; but with respect to the building of the retreat, he was adamant.

Even if we take into account Yoshimasa’s determination to achieve perfection in every detail, it may seem odd that it should have taken more than eight years to complete a small number of relatively simple structures. The slowness of the completion of the planned buildings was occasioned mainly by the irregularity with which gifts of money and workmen were received; but perhaps completion was most often delayed by Yoshimasa himself, who, when dissatisfied with some feature of a structure, would insist that it be modified or even totally rebuilt.

Europeans who visited the Ginkaku-ji in the nineteenth century were generally unimpressed by the little buildings in the garden, perhaps because they unconsciously compared this retreat of a shogun with the palaces of the kings of Europe. The Ginkaku-ji is certainly no Versailles, nor does it resemble in the slightest the Escorial, the mausoleum that Philip II of Spain built to preserve his glory. Although he devoted the last years of his life to building the Ginkaku-ji, Yoshimasa seems not to have been impelled by the desire to immortalize himself. Palaces he had built were destroyed by fire even in times of peace, and he knew from the experience of the Ōnin War how unlikely it was that any building could long resist destruction. Indeed, he may actually have courted it. For all his admiration of China, it did not occur to Yoshimasa (or anyone else of that time) to build in brick or stone in the manner of Chinese temples. Instead, Yoshimasa chose to follow Japanese tradition and used only the most perishable materials—wood and paper—as if to demonstrate his awareness of perishability as an essential element in beauty. His testament to the world—the Higashiyama retreat—is indeed a thing of beauty, but he probably did not expect it to defy the ravages of time. Paradoxically, it has lasted longer than many supposedly deathless monuments.

On July 26, 1485, Yoshimasa entered Buddhist orders at a subtemple of the Rinzai-ji in Saga, northwest of the capital. He had long wished to follow Ashikaga Yoshimitsu in shaving his head as a sign that he had withdrawn from worldly concerns. In Yoshimitsu’s case, entering Buddhist orders was a means of establishing himself as the power behind the throne, rather like the cloistered emperors of the late Heian period who, despite their Buddhist robes, still controlled affairs of state. By this time, however, Yoshimasa had lost all ambitions for this world and desired only the freedom to enjoy spiritual pleasures without being hampered by state duties. Some believe that he took the step quite suddenly, exasperated over the quarrels between his followers and those who supported his son, the shogun.¹⁶ But he was in fact carrying out a plan he had conceived two years earlier. At that time, he was stopped from shaving his head by Emperor Go-Tsuchimikado, but now he was not to be prevented from his resolution.

Yoshimasa was inducted as a priest of the Rinzai branch of Zen. He chose Ōsen Keisan (1429–1493), a monk known more for the excellence of his Chinese poetry than for his piety, to administer the tonsure. Yoshimasa took the Buddhist name Dōkei, recalling Yoshimitsu’s Buddhist name, Dōgi. Although he was now officially a priest, his new status did not bring about any marked change in his behavior. He probably did not spend much time reading texts of Zen. In 1464 he had attended fifteen sessions of lectures on Rinzairoku but frankly confessed afterward that he could make no sense of what he had heard.¹⁷ Nothing indicates that he regularly practiced sitting in Zen meditation.

The influence of Zen, though of immense importance to Yoshimasa both culturally and artistically, seems not to have greatly affected his personal religion. For comfort in an age of warfare and political uncertainty, Yoshimasa, like many in high places, turned to Amida Buddha, who had vowed to save all who called on him. Haga Kōshirō suggested that Yoshimasa’s belief in Jōdo Buddhism may have been transmitted from the imperial family.

The diary of Sanjōnishi Sanetaka (1455–1537) plainly states that all three emperors who reigned during the Higashiyama era were devout believers in Jōdo Buddhism, even though the imperial family had traditionally been closely connected with Tendai Buddhism. Jōdo priests were frequently summoned to the palace to deliver sermons to the emperor, members of the court, and court ladies. The nenbutsu, the invocation of Amida Buddha’s name as a prayer for salvation, was widely practiced. Abbot Jinson of the Daijō-in (1430–1508), the son of Ichijō Kaneyoshi, recorded in his diary during the third month of 1478 that “everybody in the imperial palace says the nenbutsu.”¹⁸

Although the Jishō-ji became a Zen temple after Yoshimasa’s death and the general plan of the buildings was borrowed from another Zen temple, the Saihō-ji, the name of its chief hall revealed Yoshimasa’s Jōdo leanings. When he asked his advisers to decide on a name for the hall where his personal Buddha (jibutsu) was to be enshrined, he directed them to choose one that was connected in some way with the name of a similar hall at the Saihō-ji but would indicate that an Amida triptych was enshrined within. The name they selected was Tōgu-dō. The characters mean literally “east seek hall,” but the expanded meaning was apparently “a person in the East seeks the Pure Land in the West.”¹⁹ The fusuma paintings in the hall that enshrined Yoshimasa’s personal Buddha were the work of Kanō Masanobu. The paintings were of the Ten Monks described by Shan-tao (613–681), the first to teach the central importance of saying the nenbutsu. Volumes of the Jōdo text Ōjō yōshū (Essentials of Salvation) lay on a desk in the room, and in front of the Tōgu-dō a lotus pond had been created, alluding to the belief that those saved by Amida Buddha would be reborn on lotuses in the Pure Land. The Zen priest Kisen Shusho (1424–1493), who visited Yoshimasa in 1487, wrote in his diary, “The place truly deserves to be called the Paradise in the West.”²⁰

Jōdo Buddhism supplied Yoshimasa with religious comfort, assuring him that when he left this world of dust and evil he would be reborn in Amida’s paradise, but his aesthetic preferences were most deeply affected by Zen. At this time, Zen priests dominated the intellectual life. Learning was preserved in the Zen monasteries rather as it had been in the monasteries of medieval Europe. A knowledge of classical Chinese was indispensable to any monk in order to read the sacred texts of Buddhism, but the Zen monks of this time were far more than merely literate. Their poetry and prose in Chinese included works of considerable literary distinction.

These writings are known today as Gozan bungaku (Literature of the Five Mountains) because monks at five great temples (“mountains”)—Nanzen-ji, Tenryū-ji, Shōkoku-ji, Kennin-ji, and Tōfuku-ji—were of predominant importance in creating this new literature. The monks led privileged lives. Even during periods of warfare and other disasters, the patronage of shoguns, military governors, and the high-ranking nobility shielded the monks of the Five Mountains from the hardships that people elsewhere suffered. Lesser Zen temples that did not have such generous patrons might experience economic hardship, but their priests probably had the satisfaction of telling themselves that they, unlike the priests of the Five Mountains, lived in faithful obedience to the orthodox Zen prescription of “honest poverty.”

The priests of the Five Mountains led lives that differed very little from those of the laity. We know from their diaries that they enjoyed gatherings at which they composed Chinese poems, attended drinking parties more often than lectures on religious and secular works, and indulged in gossip about politics and other priests. The diaries almost never mention sitting in Zen meditation or performing Buddhist rites. Some Zen monks of strong religious convictions deplored the worldly atmosphere of the great monasteries, none more so than Ikkyū Sōjun, who, disgusted with the worldly activities of the priests at the Daitoku-ji, flagrantly disregarded the rules of priestly conduct and gave himself openly to sensual pleasure, in this way expressing his contempt for the hypocritical behavior of seemingly pious priests.

In 1440, when services were held at the Daitoku-ji, the temple to which Ikkyū was long attached, on the thirteenth anniversary of the death of Ikkyū’s master, Kasō Sōdon, parishioners had assembled, bearing lavish gifts for the occasion. Ikkyū was annoyed by what he took for unseemly commotion at a ceremony honoring his master, and the lavish gifts seemed to him a profanation of Zen. He therefore decided to sever relations with the temple, but before he left he composed a poem addressed to Yōsō Sōi, the abbot of the Daitoku-ji, whom Ikkyu had elsewhere denounced as a poisonous snake, a seducer, and a leper. The poem ran:

For ten days in the temple my mind’s been in turmoil.

My feet are entangled in endless red strings.

If some day you get around to looking for me,

Try the fish shop, the wine parlor, or the brothel.

Angered by ten days of vulgar commercial activities in the temple, Ikkyū defiantly announced that he was fleeing the temple for the sanctity of the fish shop (though priests were forbidden to eat fish), the wine parlor (though drinking liquor was also forbidden), or (most shockingly) the brothel.²¹

The disgust aroused in Ikkyū by the mundane lives led by the priests at the Daitoku-ji was understandable given the ideals of Zen. It might be argued, however, that it was precisely because luxury-loving monks violated the austere ideals of earlier Zen masters that their contributions to Japanese culture were so extensive. For example, the monks of Ikkyū’s time generally obeyed the Buddhist commandment against eating meat or fish, but instead of restricting themselves to a simple meal of one soup and one vegetable, as had the Zen monks of earlier times, the monks of the Five Mountains varied their diet with delicacies originally imported from China, including noodles, tofu, and nattō (fermented beans). At first these vegetarian foods were eaten only in the Zen monasteries, but gradually they spread to the entire country and even came to be considered particularly typical of the Japanese diet. Japanese cuisine, too, had its inception in the Higashiyama era.²²

Even if Zen—whether because of the difficulty of its texts or its insistence on achieving salvation through one’s own efforts—was not suited to Yoshimasa, who was neither philosophical by disposition nor inclined to devote himself assiduously to religious ideals, it provided a congenial background for the intellectual and aesthetic life he wished to pursue. His manner of life did not change much as a result of entering orders. It is true that sometimes (as we know from surviving accounts) he ate extremely simple food, but this was probably less because of religious conviction than because he had grown tired of his normally elaborate meals. He seems, however, to have regretted the dissolute life he had earlier led, as a poem suggests. It bears the headnote, “Living a quiet life in the Tōgu-dō, on the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month, visitors came and I wrote this poem”:

 

kuyashiku zo	Today I recall
sugishi uki yo wo	The sad world where I lived
kyō zo omou	With bitter regret—
kokoro kumanaki	My mind serene as I gaze
tsuki wo nagamete	At a moon free of shadows.23

The poem suggests not merely regret over time wasted in meaningless pleasures but also the purification that Yoshimasa now felt emanating from the clarity of the moon, a familiar Buddhist symbol of enlightenment. Another poem was interpreted by Haga Koshiro as meaning that Yoshimasa had moved to a higher stage of aesthetic appreciation from his earlier preference for positive, rich beauty to an awareness of negative, incomplete beauty:

 

wa ga io wa	My little hut stands
tsukimachiyama no	At the foot of the mountain
fumoto nite	“Waiting for the Moon”
katamuku tsuki no	And my thoughts go to the light
kage wo shi zo omou	Of the moon sinking in the sky.24

It is possible to detect in this poem and others composed at the Higashiyama retreat the first expression of Yoshimasa’s appreciation of the quiet, subdued, refined beauty associated with the term wabi. The Ginkaku-ji would be the embodiment of this new interest.