Minami

The Minami were a cadet house of the Kō family, whose original surname was Takashina. Their founder Yorimoto, a son of Kō Shigeuji, established the branch at Maruki in Shimotsuke Province, and the house hereditarily headed the Ashikaga household's administrative office.

Its best-known head was Minami Munetsugu, grandson of Yorimoto and a cousin once removed of Kō no Moronao, the first Muromachi shogunate steward. Munetsugu accompanied Ashikaga Takauji east during the Nakasendai rebellion of 1335 and served the shogunate as constable of Mikawa and, from about 1347, Bitchu.

In the Kannō Disturbance of 1349 to 1352 he took Takauji and Moronao's side against Ashikaga Tadayoshi; after Moronao's murder he issued documents in the steward's authority. He founded the Zen temple Seigen-ji in Ashikaga in 1357 and died in 1371.