nd kept active in all parts of the
empire. It was due to his clever strategy that Kyoto lay under
constant menace from the south. If the first great protagonists in
the struggle between the Northern and the Southern Courts were Prince
Morinaga and Takauji, and those of the next were Nitta Yoshisada and
Takauji, the third couple was Kitabatake Chikafusa and Takauji."
Chikafusa was of wide erudition; he had a wonderful memory, and his
perpetual guides were justice and righteousness. After his death the
Southern Court fell into a state of division against itself; and its
spirit sensibly declined.

DEATH OF TAKAUJI

Takauji survived Chikafusa by only four years; he expired in 1358.
Undoubtedly his figure is projected in very imposing dimensions on
the pages of his country's history, and as the high mountain in the
Chinese proverb is gilded by the sunbeams and beaten by the storm, so
condemnation and eulogy have been poured upon his head by posterity.
An annalist of his time says: "Yoritomo was impartial in bestowing
rewards, but so severe in meting out punishments as to seem almost
inhuman. Takauji, however, in addition to being humane and just, is
strong-minded, for no peril ever summons terror to his eye or
banishes the smile from his lip; merciful, for he knows no hatred and
treats his foes as his sons; magnanimous, for he counts gold and
silver as stones or sand, and generous, for he never compares the
gift with the recipient, but gives away everything as it comes to
hand. It is the custom for people to carry many presents to the
shogun on the first day of the eighth month, but so freely are those
things given away that nothing remains by the evening, I am told."

A later historian, Rai Sanyo (1780-1832), wrote: "There were as brave
men and as clever in the days of the Minamoto as in the days of the
Ashikaga. Why, then, did the former never dare to take up arms
against the Bakufu, whereas the latter never ceased to assault the
Ashikaga? It was because the Minamoto and the Hojo understood the
expediency of not entrusting too much power to potential rivals,
whereas the Ashikaga gave away lands so rashly that some families--as
the Akamatsu, the Hosokawa, and the Hatakeyama--came into the
possession of three or four provinces, and in an extreme case one
family--that of Yamana--controlled ten provinces, or one-sixth of the
whole empire. These septs, finding themselves so powerful, became
unmanageable. Then the division o