Site of Ashikaga Shoguns’ Mansion
[HIGASHIJIN]
Part of the Muromachi campus of Doshisha University occupies land that was once the site of the Ashikaga family mansion. The Ashikaga were a powerful samurai family who in 1338 established the shogunate (military government) that was to rule Japan until the latter half of the sixteenth century.
Ashikaga Yoshimitsu (1358–1408), the third shogun, built his residence on this site in 1379. Nicknamed the Flower Palace (Hana no Gosho), it faced the busy Muromachi street. The place-name came to be associated with the Ashikaga government, which is also known as the Muromachi shogunate.
A stone monument marks the site of the mansion, which in the fifteenth century was devastated by war and abandoned. Many of the relics excavated from the former Flower Palace are now on display and open to the public in the Kambaikan building nearby.