Yoshiaki Ashikaga (, Ashikaga Yoshiaki ) (December 5th 1537 - October 9th 1597) was fifteenth and the last of the Shoguns Ashikaga of the end of the Period Muromachi of the history of the Japan. Yoshiaki was the third wire of the twelfth Shogun Yoshiharu Ashikaga and reigned of 1568 with 1573. Before that, he was monk with Nara, under the name of Kakukei or Gakkei' .

The absence of an central authority in the hard capital of Japan until the armies of the lord of war Nobunaga Oda enter Kyōto in 1568 and which this one restores the shogunat Muromachi while setting up Yoshiaki, which is under its control, like shogun, which begins the Period Azuchi Momoyama. Yoshihide Ashikaga, the fourteenth shogun, is deposited before to have even been able to penetrate in the capital. However, in spite of the reinstallation of an central authority with Kyōto and the attempt of Nobunaga to unify the country, the fight between the Daimyō hard until the unification is total, and final peace is established only a long time after its assassination in 1582.

Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the general who will link Japan later, wanted that Yoshiaki Ashikaga made of him his/her adoptive son, but this one refuses.

The shogunat Ashikaga is destroyed in 1573 when Nobunaga Oda throws Yoshiaki out of Kyōto, after having ventilated the plot between Yoshiaki, which was afraid of Nobunaga, and the clans Mōri, Asakura and Takeda as well as the monks of the Hongan-Ji. Later, it settles with Ōsaka under the protection of Hideyoshi and turns over to the religious life, under the name of Shōzan .