costly objects of virtu, Chinese and Japanese, and there also, in chambers specially planned for the purpose, he inaugurated the tea ceremonial (_cha-no-yu_), afterward so fashionable in Japan, devoting his days to the practice of effeminate dilettanteism. Official duties received no attention, and by degrees his financial circumstances became so straitened that, finding it impossible to procure money for the indulgence of his whims, he began to lay heavy imposts on the people of the provinces and on the merchants of Kyōto especially, who were taxed five or six times in the course of the year. Under these circumstances, great discontent prevailed and riots occurred, the poor breaking into the houses of the wealthy, and destroying all certificates of debt that were found there, by which means the shōgun himself was simultaneously relieved of his monetary obligations. To this device, endorsed in effect, as it was, by the authorities, the people mockingly gave the name of _tokusei_, or the government of virtue, and Yoshimasa found it altogether to his taste, since it extricated him from many of his financial embarrassments. The shōgun did not even shrink from sending envoys to China with instructions to prefer requests for money to the Chinese government, and the latter were not unwilling thus to purchase immunity from the raids to which their ports were exposed at the hands of Kiushū pirates. Under Yoshimasa's administration the power and prestige of the shōgunate declined sensibly; the affairs of state fell into confusion; the most cruel mandates were frequently issued; customs opposed to the dictates of humanity and the principles of morality prevailed; the _kwanryō_, following the shōgun's example, subserved the duties of their office to selfish ends, and finally this hopeless misgovernment culminated in the celebrated war of the Onin era, marking the darkest age of Japan's history.