In 1336 Ashikaga Takauji established his military headquarters, the Muromachi Bakufu, in Kyoto, home of Japan's traditional civil and religious aristocracy, and economic center of the country. Nationally, the Bakufu depended on a balance of power between the shogun at the center and the provincially based shugo. But as its control over the shugo weakened, the Bakufu was increasingly forced to rely for income on its urban base, Kyoto, competing with the still-powerful traditional elites. To explain the resulting configuration of established interests, the kenmon taisei theory of Kuroda Toshio has proved most useful. According to this theory, great families or family-like groups called kenmon, including the civil, religious, and military elites, dominated the political order of the medieval period. Deriving their wealth from proprietary landholdings, the kenmon engaged in constant competition among themselves for power and influence. The Bakufu achieved hegemony within the kenmon system, but still relied on the support of the other kenmon. For this reason, the Muromachi Bakufu consistently defined the interests of the great Kyoto kenmon, except when they obstructed trade or caused unrest. A wide range of sources covering the entire Muromachi period attests to the remarkable continuity of this policy.

This study documents the Bakufu's establishment of administrative and judicial control over the city, and its acquisition of the power to tax the commercial sector, especially the moneylending establishment. A case study of a minor Bakufu vassal, the Kawashima family, on the outskirts of Kyoto, brings into sharper focus Bakufu policies in the Kyoto area and simultaneous economic and social developments which were to cause the demise of the kenmon elites.

By the mid-fifteenth century the Muromachi Bakufu had become the universally recognized public authority with administrative control over the city. It was the only kenmon with a regularly functioning litigation apparatus and thus the only authority able to adjudicate disputes among kenmon. But in the commercial sector the traditional kenmon continued to receive income from merchants and artisans. Only with the rise of powerful regional warriors (daimyo) in the sixteenth century did the kenmon, including the Bakufu, finally disappear.