(1305-1358)
Japanese military leader, shogun (1338-1358), and founder of the Muromachi bakufu (military government). Takauji was born into the Ashikaga family, important vassals of the Kamakura period shoguns. The Kamakura bakufu of the Hojo family was waning in power by the early 14th century, and the Emperor Go-Daigo, who was plotting against it, was exiled in 1331. Go-Daigo's supporters continued to work for the overthrow of the bakufu, so in 1333 an army was sent under Takauji to crush the rebels. However, he switched sides and declared his support for Go-Daigo, and within weeks the Kamakura bakufu was at an end. Go-Daigo returned from exile and vainly attempted, in the Kemmu Restoration, to re-establish the principle of direct imperial rule. This had no chance of success in the warrior-dominated society that Japan had become, and his regime was overthrown by Takauji. In 1336 he drove Go-Daigo from Kyoto and defeated loyalist forces under Kusunoki Masahige, installing his own puppet emperor in the capital. Go-Daigo himself fled south to Yoshino, where he instituted an alternative imperial court. As the head of one of the branches of the Minamoto family, Takauji was eligible for the title of shogun, which he received in 1338, and he was the first of the hereditary Ashikaga shoguns of the Muromachi period. He established his bakufu in Kyoto, but he had to contend with the threat of the rival imperial court at Yoshino and its supporters, and with internal frictions within his own camp, ordering his own brother's death in 1352. His Ashikaga shogunal dynasty endured for over two centuries.