The Onin War Wrecks Kyoto and Opens a Century of Warring States
A succession dispute between two allied families spirals into ten years of civil war that leaves no real winner
Quick facts
- Ashikaga shogunate founded
- 1338 CE, by Ashikaga Takauji
- Onin War
- 1467-1477 CE
- Cause
- Hosokawa vs. Yamana succession rivalry
- Aftermath
- Sengoku (Warring States) period begins
What happened
The Ashikaga (Muromachi) shogunate began in 1338 when Ashikaga Takauji, sent by the Kamakura shogunate to suppress a rival emperor, instead switched sides and became shogun himself. The shogunate that followed was chronically unstable, one contemporary complained of "assaults in the night, armed robberies, falsified documents" and general lawlessness. That instability erupted into full civil war in 1467 with the Onin War, whose cause was, in World History Encyclopedia's words, "the bitter rivalry between the Hosokawa and Yamana family groups" over shogunal succession. The fighting eventually "sucked in most of the influential clans and destroyed most of Heiankyo," the capital. When it finally ended in 1477 there was no victor and no resolution, and the conflict's long aftermath is what historians call the Sengoku, or Warring States, period.
Why it matters
The Onin War effectively ended the shogunate's ability to control Japan's regional warlords, ushering in over a century where local daimyo fought each other directly for territory rather than deferring to any central authority. That vacuum is what later lets Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu rise as unifiers.
How we know
The war's causes and destruction are described in period accounts of Kyoto's devastation and later corroborated by the scale of decentralized daimyo rule that followed across the 15th and 16th centuries.
Sources
- World History Encyclopedia. Muromachi Period · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- World History Encyclopedia. Sengoku Period · Reputable sourceworldhistory.org · The domain "worldhistory.org" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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