The Ashikaga family were an off-shoot of the Minamoto family which established the Kamakura shogunate, 1185-1333. A member of the family, Ashikaga Takauji, turned against the shogunate and ended it in 1333. Five years later, he made himself shogun. The family headed the Muromachi shogunate, named after the district in Kyoto where their headquarters was located, until it was ended in 1573 by Oda Nobunaga who deposed the last in this line of shoguns, Ashikaga Yoshiaki. The height of power of the shogunate was in the 14th and early 15th century; the remaining period was one of increasing turmoil. The Ashikaga family were major patrons of the arts and many of the most beautiful works of Japanese art date from this period. The Ashikaga shoguns are memorialized in wooden statues at the Tojiin temple in Kyoto.
