Ashikaga

Ashikaga, city, southwestern Tochigi ken (prefecture), northeast-central Honshu, Japan. It is located on the Watarase River at the northern edge of the Kantō Plain.

Ashikaga was the site of a former classical school, the Ashikaga Gakkō, founded in the 9th century; according to one tradition, its founder was the poet Ono Takamura. The school was restored in 1432 by a nobleman, Uesugi Norizane, who engaged a Buddhist monk to head the school and imported a number of classical Chinese books, many of which are now housed in a library on the school grounds; the grounds also contain a 17th-century shrine dedicated to Confucius, and the city has two Buddhist temples.

Ashikaga Takauji, who established the Ashikaga shogunate in the 14th century, was born there. Ashikaga was a post town on the Nikkō Highway during the Edo (Tokugawa) period (1603–1867). It was a dyeing and weaving centre for several centuries, and, after the national railway reached it in 1867, it flourished as a textile centre of the sericultural region in the northern Kantō Plain.

Ashikaga has maintained its traditional fibre industry and added the manufacture of synthetic fibres. Its other manufactures include metal products and machinery. In the southern, rural part of the city, flowers, strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers are raised for shipment to Ōsaka. Pop. (2010) 154,530; (2015) 149,452.