Ashikaga Yoshinori
This was not an isolated setback for the 51-year-old Shōtetsu. The shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimochi had died in 1428, and his younger brother Ashikaga Yoshinori (b. 1394, d. 1441) had succeeded him. Unlike his deceased brother, Yoshinori, with regard to the poetic dispute between the Reizei and the Asukai, distinctly preferred the Asukai's poetry; in addition, several traditional biographies of Shōtetsu claim that Yoshinori had a personal antipathy toward him, going so far as to place Shōtetsu under house arrest. Shōtetsu would suffer two major blows from this official hostility. First, the income from his hereditary estates was confiscated. This was a major financial blow to him, but by no means fatal.