1487. The famous Ota do Kwang was assassinated by Sadamasa. An anecdote related of him is often taken as a subject by Japanese artists. He was out hawking when a heavy rain came on. Seeing a little cottage, he with his attendants went to ask for a grass rain-coat. A beautiful young woman came out, and upon his asking for what he wanted, she went to the garden, pulled a branch of a flower, and kneeling down presented it to the gentleman. Looking at the plant, he at once perceived that she was modestly making a play upon the word rain-coat, the plant being known by the name of “no seed,” which implied also by a turn of words that she had no rain-coat to give him. 1487. War again broke out between the Shiogoon and Sasaki in the province of Oomi, which lasted for three or four years, when the Shiogoon fled to the territories of O-ooji, then chief of the western provinces of Nippon. About 1494 the family of Hojio of Odawara took its rise in the person of Zinkio, who had been a merchant in Isse, but whose genius seems to have been military, and who was known afterward as Hojio so woon. He seized whatever territory in the Kwanto and around the castle of Odawara he could lay his hands upon. During these periods this unfortunate country was not only desolated by civil war and all its horrors, but it suffered severely in addition from convulsions of nature. In 1472 a famine arose as the concomitant of war. In 1475 a very extensive earthquake occurred on the sixth day of the eighth month, when a wave from the sea, during a temporary subsidence of the earth, carried away at one sweep a large part of the lower quarter of the city of Osaka. In 1496 there was a drought all over the empire, which was followed by a famine in 1497. And the next year was marked by severe earthquakes all over Japan; while in 1506 all the old fir-trees on the hill Kassunga yama near Narra died to the number of above 7,000. A similar disease had visited Japan in 1406, exactly a hundred years before. Severe drought and dreadful thunderstorms in 1514 were followed in 1515 by earthquakes over the whole country. The new century brought no cessation from war and assassination. Hossokawa, then prime minister, was assassinated by his servant Kassai. O-ooji, from the western provinces, marched upon Miako, bringing his protégé, the late Shiogoon, with him, and, seizing the capital, caused the Emperor to install him as prime minister or Kwanrei, an office which had for many years been in the hold of the three families, Shibba, Hossokawa, and Hatake yama. An attempt was made in Miako to assassinate the Shiogoon during the night, but he killed the assassins with his own sword.