Basara represents a particular aesthetics in which people disregarded social class or rank, laughed scornfully at authorities such as court nobles or the Emperor, and esteemed fashionable and glamorous garments or behaviors; it was considered to be a type of behavior that was manifested in gekokujo (an inversion of the social order in which the lowly people reigned over the elite), which flourished in the subsequent Sengoku period (the period of warring states).
身分秩序を無視して公家や天皇といった時の権威を嘲笑し、粋で華美な服装や振る舞いを好む美意識であり、後の戦国時代における下剋上的行動の一種とされる。