Born in Kyoto as the son of the sixth Ashikaga shogun Yoshinori, he was appointed the eighth shogun in 1449. His administration during his time as shogun is regarded by many historians as politically inept: he took no vigorous political reforms amid recurring fiscal crises, famines, and peasant uprisings. Conflicts over his successor — between his brother-in-law Hatakeyama Mochikuni and between his younger brother Yoshimi and his son Yoshihisa — became among the contributing causes of the Onin War (1467–1477). As Kyoto was burned to ruins in the Onin War, Yoshimasa lost interest in politics and immersed himself in art, crafts, the tea ceremony, and garden design. In 1473 he transferred the shogunate to his son Yoshihisa, and from 1482 began constructing a mountain villa in the Higashiyama hills — the Higashiyama-dono. After his death this villa became the Zen temple Jishoji, commonly known as Ginkakuji (Silver Pavilion). As a synthesis of the Higashiyama culture combining shoin-zukuri architecture and kare-sansui dry gardens, it remains a UNESCO World Heritage Site today. He patronized and cultivated the arts of no theater, renga linked verse, and ink-wash painting — the cultural flowering called Higashiyama culture — and left an immeasurable cultural heritage for later Japan. He died in 1490 at age 55.