ABSTRACT
The chief idea that now occupied the minds of the Court nobles was delightfully simple. It was that the day of the Bulce was completely over; and that the Kuge had come by their own again. One of the first great questions to be faced by the restored government was the settlement of the provinces. The Ashikagas were soon in the capital, whence Daigo II. had fled to take refuge in Hi-ei-zan. The tribunals to deal with all had been originally composed of Court officials alone; and the various attempts that had been made to re-organise the Kyoto law-courts towards the end of the thirteenth century had shown that the Court nobles were incompetent as men of affairs. Here it ought to be said that Akiiye’s father, Kitabatake Chikafusa, had, on the death of Prince Yonaga, with whose education he had been entrusted, taken the tonsure and retired from public life just before the outbreak of 1331.
