The Tangled Web of Japanese Civil War

After the establishment of the first samurai government at Kamakura in the 1190s, warrior rule proved well less than stable. The Muromachi Shogunate in particular imploded spectacularly in the 1460s into a massive all-out brawl between its own vassals. That conflict subsequently spiraled out into the Senghul Kojita, the age of civil war which racked Japan for a century and a half. After all, estate rights didn't matter all that much when there was nothing forcing the locals to actually pay taxes they supposedly owed you.