Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/49

 administrative post (kwanryō), second in importance to that of Shōgun only, was declared to be hereditary in three powerful families, and its holders had virtually uncontrolled discretion of affairs at Kamakura. These changes seem to have been dictated by a policy of opportunism rather than by calm judgment.

Yoshimitsu was swayed at one moment by high impulses, at another by sensuous inactivity. Incapable of persistence in great efforts, he had no sooner accomplished his immediate purpose than he reverted to a condition of luxurious ease and dilettanteism. Just as his study of Buddhism, though profound while it lasted, brought in the end only an access of epicureanism, so the lessons of history taught him to purchase a brief respite from warfare by concessions which could not fail to aggravate the difficulties of his successors. Two years after the unification of the monarchy, he took the tonsure and retired from official life. But he continued to exercise administrative authority, just as the ex-Emperors had done at the close of the Heian epoch. In fact he aped the fashions of Imperialism, whereas the Minamoto and the Hōjō had carefully preserved their status of subjects. Whenever he went abroad, his escort resembled that of a sovereign, and the magnificence of his mansion at Muromachi as well as the beauty of the grounds surrounding it, won for it the name of the "palace of flowers." He built for