Editing Ashikaga shogunate (section)

== Fall of the shogunate ==
Bloody succession crises amongst the warrior families led to a decline in the authority of the bakufu until it almost vanished by 1441 at the death of [[Ashikaga Yoshinori]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Sansom |first=Sir George Bailey |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HX8GAQAAIAAJ |title=A History of Japan, 1334-1615 |date=1958 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-0525-7 |pages=217, 281 |language=en}}</ref> The lack of government control was especially acute when the ''daimyō'' feuded among themselves in the pursuit of power during the [[Ōnin War]] (1467–1477), until it erupted into open warfare in the late Muromachi period, also known as the [[Sengoku period]].

When the ''shōgun'' [[Ashikaga Yoshiteru]] was assassinated in 1565, an ambitious ''daimyō'', [[Oda Nobunaga]], seized the opportunity and installed Yoshiteru's brother [[Ashikaga Yoshiaki]] as the 15th Ashikaga ''shōgun'' and Nobunaga's [[Puppet ruler|puppet]]. However Yoshiaki was not entirely subservient to Nobunaga: he continued to strike bargains amongst the monasteries to gain favor, and mediated between powerful clans such as the [[Ōtomo clan|Otomo]] and [[Mori clan (Genji)|Mori]].<ref name=":0" /> The Ashikaga shogunate was finally destroyed in 1573 when Nobunaga drove Yoshiaki out of Kyoto. Initially, Yoshiaki fled to [[Shikoku]]. Afterwards, he sought and received protection from the [[Mōri clan]] in western Japan.

The Ashikaga family survived the 16th century, and a branch of it became the ''daimyō'' family of the Kitsuregawa domain.{{efn|With the end of the Kitsuregawa line following the death of [[Ashikaga Atsuuji]] in 1983, the current de facto head of the family is [[Ashikaga Yoshihiro]], of the [[Hirashima Kubō]] line.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}}}{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}