Yoshimitsu's Urban Plan

The several monumental building projects commissioned by Ashikaga Yoshimitsu served to elevate the shogun’s status and facilitate the

Long-term political success of his administration. As discussed, the reconstruction of the Imperial Palace made the shogun the primary guarantor not only of the emperor’s living space but also of the most critical venues of imperial statecraft. The two temple projects of Shokokuji and the Shokokuji Pagoda constituted massive patronage of the Buddhist establishment. And finally, the Muromachi Palace, built in a grand, traditional style in the elite district of Kamigyo, undoubtedly elevated the profile of the warrior administration while providing the shogun himself with the formal and informal venues necessary to behave in the manner expected of a high-ranking member of the court.

A large body of scholarship has explored the styles and functions of these several sites individually. The significance of their locations, however, has only recently been examined.75 That the historical relevance of location has been overlooked is a grave mistake in a city like premodern Kyoto, where notions of space, place, and orientation were deeply tied to pageantry as a function of status.76 But there is an additional problem. It is assumed that because Yoshimitsu possessed the political and economic capacity to build what he wanted, anywhere he wanted, his decisions about what and where to build were arbitrary. Again, in a city such as this and with a man as political savvy as Yoshimitsu, we should assume quite the contrary. It would be more likely that the shogun carefully considered how certain structures and locations would be perceived as indicators of his status and role. A recent mapping exercise, made possible by new textual and archeological discoveries, showed precisely this, revealing that Yoshimitsu’s several Kamigyo projects were not only strategically located, they were arranged according to a highly contrived matrix indicative of sweeping political objectives (Figure 5.9).77

It was first noticed that Shokokuji’s great Mountain Gate (sanmon) and the seven-storied pagoda were aligned perfectly along an east-west axis. This same axis, when extended to the west, bisected the northern half of the Muromachi property, the portion generally thought to have been used as Yoshimitsu’s official residence.78

Drawing a north-south meridian on the map through the center of the Mountain Gate reveals yet another equally extraordinary configuration, one far too well constructed to be coincidental: Shokokuji’s Dharma Hall, Buddha Hall, and Mountain Gate were aligned along an axis that, when extended to the south, perfectly intersected the Imperial Palace’s shi-shinden, the emperor’s most important ritual structure

And site of the official throne room. Incidentally, this clean alignment of Shokokuji and the Imperial Palace remains unchanged to this day, only slightly corrupted by several reconstructions.

Attention to the distance between the three east-west-aligned sites first mentioned leads to the discovery of a second north-south axis. Note how the Muromachi Palace’s northern shinden, the Mountain Gate, and the seven-storied pagoda did not stand at an equal distance from each other. Rather, the Mountain Gate is offset slightly to the west of the point of equidistance. That point does, however, line up with another structure of significance: the monastery’s functional outer gate, the somon, or “Main Gate.” By drawing an additional north-south line through the Main Gate leading south, past the Imperial Palace, down into Shimogyo, an astonishing intersection emerges: Shokokuji’s Main Gate, the monastery’s “front door,” was aligned with the Ashikaga mortuary temple of Tojiji and the original Sanjo-bomon Palace, the first Ashikaga headquarters in Kyoto.

S.9* Map of Yoshimitsu's urban matrix, ca. 1400.

Textual sources frequently refer to what might best be characterized as buffer zones associated with each of Yoshimitsu’s several projects.79 The Imperial Palace, for example, was surrounded by a semiprotected area referred to as “Jinchu,” meaning “within the encampment.”89 Guards were stationed at outer gates, and fires or crimes that occurred within were lamented for the danger or disrespect they posed to the palace. A similar though asymmetrical buffer was likewise attached to the Shokokuji monastery. Bounded in the north by the monastery’s Main Gate and in the south by another gate called Hokkai-mon (lit. “Dharma World Gate”), this so-called “Realm of Mystical Adornment” (Myoshogon-iki), covered an area equivalent to a generous nine city blocks (more than thirty-two acres). Referred to in sources as an integral but not a core part of Shokokuji, this “Realm” might be compared to the common medieval phenomena of monzen-machi, or “town in front of the gates,” discussed in chapter 3. Similar associated spaces appear to have extended southward from both the Muromachi Palace and the seven-storied pagoda. Texts confirm that the former possessed a detached and wholly symbolic outer gate located on Ichijo Road near the intersection of Muromachi. Like the Hokkai-mon, also located along Ichijo, it too marked entry into a liminal space through which visitors would pass on their way to the respective primary structure three blocks to the north.

Although a similar detached gate for the pagoda has not yet been discovered, the robust symmetry of the overall plan strongly suggests one stood near the intersection of Ichijo and Higashikyogoku. Had there actually been such a gate, the lining up of the three symbolic and detached egresses along Ichijo, Heian-kyo’s northern boundary, stands as further evidence of Yoshimitsu’s sensitivity toward the old city’s spatial customs. While he relegated his warrior headquarters and major temple projects to the capital’s outskirts, symbolic gateways leading to each provided perfect continuity connecting the latter to the former. Not only were Yoshimitsu’s projects carefully arranged vis-a-vis each other, their locations took into account the classical city at a time when we might otherwise have expected such considerations to be long gone.

Interpreting Yoshimitsu’s urban plan is difficult because many integral elements of the plan itself are likely buried under the modern cityscape. Indeed, much of the picture is yet to be revealed. Nevertheless, the evidence already uncovered makes it possible to propose that Yoshimitsu saw himself as a political unifier intent upon reversing the trend toward ever greater degrees of fragmentation that characterized the medieval status quo. Until his time, power in the capital was largely a matter of contest between the imperial court, various private interests (aristocratic and warrior alike), and each of the several powerful Buddhist sects. Throughout much of his career, even the imperial institution itself had remained divided. The urban plan introduced here suggests that Yoshimitsu sought to reimagine Kyoto as an integrated whole within which each of the powerful bodies of interest had a clearly defined place. The physical alignment of buildings reflected a more political, even philosophical, alignment of institutions that the hegemon was engineering through his strategic engagement in the workings of each. Yoshimitsu was, after all, not just shogun, the supreme leader of the military regime, he also became grand chancellor of state, the highest-ranking member of the imperial court. Not merely did he house, patronize, and protect the emperor, he negotiated the reunification of the imperial lineages in 1392, thus ending the civil war that had divided the institution for more than half a century. Besides being the pre-eminent patron of the Shokokuji Pagoda when that structure was ceremoniously dedicated in 1399, he served as chief witness in the formal ritual, a role customarily filled by a cloistered prince acting in the guise of a Shingon priest. And finally, upon retirement, Yoshimitsu

Took the tonsure and became (at least ostensibly) a Zen priest affiliated most closely with the monastic community based at Shokokuji.

Although profoundly different from its classical counterpart, medieval Kyoto under Yoshimitsu resembled Heian-kyo in one critical way: The city was once again a unified, largely symmetrical urban matrix, centered on the imperial palace. This urban plan can be easily read as a homology for the way this remarkable historical figure succeeded in unifying the capital’s several bodies of authority. Yoshimitsu not only defined the interrelationships between these bodies—physically and politically—he effected a degree of unification among them. Besides the city itself, he was, after all, the one thing they all had in common.