, also known as Uesugi Ujinori, was the chief advisor to Ashikaga Mochiuji, an enemy of the Ashikaga shogunate in feudal

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. When he was rebuked by Mochiuji in 1415, and forced to resign, Zenshū organized a rebellion. Zenshū received aid for his rebellion from nearly half the ''

daimyō were powerful Japanese magnates, feudal lords who, from the 10th century to the early Meiji era, Meiji period in the middle 19th century, ruled most of Japan from their vast hereditary land holdings. They were subordinate to the shogun and no ...

s'' in the northern and eastern provinces, and took

Kamakura , officially , is a city of Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. It is located in the Kanto region on the island of Honshu. The city has an estimated population of 172,929 (1 September 2020) and a population density of 4,359 people per km2 over the tota ...

. Mochiuji was forced to flee the city. However, despite pursuing similar goals to those of the shogunate (''bakufu''), Zenshū was still rebelling against his lord, and so the ''bakufu'' had no choice but to send troops to stop him. In 1417, Zenshū and his allies found themselves surrounded. They fled to Kamakura's Tsurugaoka Hachimangū, where Zenshū committed ''

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

''. The rebellion did not end with Zenshū's death, however, and neither did Mochiuji's opposition to it. For more than five years, Mochiuji continued to attack Zenshū's allies, including the Oda clan, Takeda clan, and nobles of

Musashi Province was a Provinces of Japan, province of Japan, which today comprises Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, most of Saitama Prefecture and part of Kanagawa Prefecture. It was sometimes called . The province encompassed Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Kawasaki and Yokohama. ...

. Anger towards Mochiuji and his office only continued to grow, until the ''bakufu'' took action to stop him in 1423.

References

*Sansom, George (1961). ''A History of Japan: 1334–1615''. Stanford: Stanford University Press. {{DEFAULTSORT:Uesugi, Zenshu Year of birth missing 1417 deaths Japanese rebels Uesugi clan