An Unfamiliar Place

In mid-fourteenth-century Japan, amid decades of civil unrest caused by a violent rivalry over imperial succession, three men embarked on journeys that would lead them to reimagine their world: the second Ashikaga shogun and general Yoshiakira (1330–1367), the Buddhist lay priest Sōkyū (ca. 1350), and the statesman Nijō Yoshimoto (1320–1388). All three shared elite social status, political connections, and a deep engagement with poetry. Yoshiakira traveled from Kyoto to Sumiyoshi Shrine in Osaka