The Way to a Sakai Shogunate---The Awakening and Rise of the Miyoshi Family (2)---

      A turning point came about the Miyoshi Family in 1467, when Miyoshi Yukinaga (1458-1520), Nagayuki's son, was only 9 years old.  Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430-1473), Yorimoto's great grandson, and Yamana Mochitoyo (1404-1473), Ujikiyo's grandson by his daughter, started the Onin War, which lasted till 1477.  In the war, Hosokawa Shigeyuki (1434-1511) advanced to Kyoto to support Katsumoto in 1467.  Yukinaga was sent to Kyoto to work for Shigeyuki's camp.  At the age of 9?  Presumably, he functioned as a partner of male homosexuality.  After coming into his adolescence, he might have become rebellious.  He abruptly fled and came back home in 1471.  He even shut himself in the hills of the Iya Valley.  Finally, he was brought back by Shigeyuki's son, Masayuki (1455-1488).

     After the Onin War, Yukinaga showed his talent.  Shigemoto stayed in Kyoto and so did Yukinaga.  After the war, the shogunate lost its authority.  Not only local samurai but even peasants became rebellious.  Yukinaga was good at enticing and organizing those with rebellious minds.  Soon, he was suspected to be a wirepuller of frequent uprisings of peasants, carriers, and other townspeople around Kyoto.

     On June 11th, 1485, Yukinaga tried to rescue his man who was captured as a robber.  The attempt was stopped by Hosokawa Masamoto (1466-1507), Katsumoto's son.  In August in the same year, an uprising broke out in Kyoto.  Yukinaga was suspected to be the ringleader of it, and his lodging was surrounded by Masamoto and Taga Takatada (1425-1486), a chief of the Police Department, on August 8th.  The information of the domiciliary visit, however, had been leaked to Yukinaga, and he had asked Masayuki for his protection the previous night.  Masamoto and Takatada then surrounded the residence of Masayuki.  He dodged their accusation, and Masamoto and Takatada withdrew.  Unbelievably, Yukinaga started provoking people just the following day, and robbed pawn shops of pledge on 14th.

     Masayuki's favor to Yukinaga made even some of Masayuki's vassals jealous, and they pulled out back to Awa Province.  In October, Masayuki and Yukinaga, far from regretting what they had done, went back to Awa Province and suppressed them.  After these incidents, Yukinaga became a man in the news in Kyoto.

     When Masayuki died young in 1488, his brother, Yoshiharu (1468-1495), succeeded to the Guardian Samurai of Awa Province, and Yukinaga became a vassal of him.  Meanwhile, Masamoto didn't have a son and adopted Yoshiharu's second son, Sumimoto (1489-1520), as the Awa-Hosokawa Family was second to Keicho-Hosokawa Family.  On February 19th, 1506, Yukinaga was dispatched to Kyoto as Sumimoto's butler to command an advance party.  Accordingly, he became a vassal of the Keicho-Hosokawa Family.  In August, he advanced to Yamato Province under Masamoto's order.  Yukinaga was as shrewd as ever.  He embarked on the conflicts over taxation powers as a butler of Sumimoto.  It meant he took risks for Sumimoto in power struggles among central powerful families, and that gave him important lessons.  Those experiences and his own potential to organize rebellious moods brought him up to be an important figure even in the central political circles.  His up-and-coming emergence, however, raised jealousies and envy among conventional central samurai of his peers, such as Hosokawa Hisaharu (?-1519), the head of Awaji-Hosokawa Family, and Kozai Motonaga (?-1507), who was dispatched from Masamoto to Sumimoto as another butler.