Tokugawa Ieyasu

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Tokugawa Ieyasu was born Matsudaira Takechiyo on the 31st of January, 1543, in Okazaki Castle, to a minor warlord who could not even protect his own son. By the time Ieyasu died on the 1st of June, 1616, the government he built would survive for more than two and a half centuries. That is the span of a dynasty. How does a child born into one of the weakest clans in feudal Japan, a child who spent years as a prisoner in an enemy lord's temple, become the man whose descendants ruled Japan until the Meiji Restoration in 1868? The answer involves extraordinary patience, a willingness to absorb punishment without striking back too soon, and a talent for making other men's disasters into his own opportunities. Ieyasu was the third of Japan's three so-called Great Unifiers, after Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He outlived both of them. A popular proverb about him would later say: "Ieyasu won the Empire by retreating." What the script of his life actually shows is something more intricate than strategic retreat. It is the story of a man who learned, as a hostage child, how to endure.

• 2. Hostage and Heir

  ›

  Takechiyo was five years old when Oda Nobuhide had him abducted. His father, Matsudaira Hirotada, had reached out to the powerful Imagawa clan for military help against the Oda, and Nobuhide intercepted the hostage transfer meant to seal that alliance. Nobuhide then threatened to execute the boy unless Hirotada severed all ties with the Imagawa. Hirotada refused. He told Nobuhide, in effect, that sacrificing his own son would prove the seriousness of his commitment. Despite that refusal, Nobuhide did not kill the boy. He held Takechiyo for three years at the Honshoji Temple in Nagoya instead.

  In 1549, when Takechiyo was six, his father Hirotada died of what may have been a natural illness. A scholarly article published by Muraoka Mikio in 2015 assessed the popular theory that Hirotada was murdered by vassals bribed by the Oda, and found it unreliable. Around the same time, Nobuhide himself died during an epidemic. The Oda clan's grip weakened, and the Imagawa seized the moment. An Imagawa general named Sessai laid siege to a castle held by Nobuhide's illegitimate eldest son, Oda Nobuhiro. Nobunaga, Nobuhide's second son and heir, negotiated Nobuhiro's release in exchange for Takechiyo. The boy was transferred to Sunpu as a hostage of the Imagawa. He was nine years old.

  At Sunpu, the Imagawa treated him fairly well. They had uses for him: Imagawa Yoshimoto intended Takechiyo to eventually inherit the Matsudaira clan's territory, so that the Imagawa could rule it through him as a proxy. In 1556, Takechiyo officially came of age in a genpuku ceremony presided over by Yoshimoto himself. He married his first wife, Lady Tsukiyama, a relative of Yoshimoto, the following year at the age of fifteen by East Asian reckoning. Their son, Matsudaira Nobuyasu, was born a year later. Within that same period, Yoshimoto sent the young man back to Mikawa Province to fight against the Oda clan, the very family that had held him prisoner. His education in loyalty, hostage politics, and military command was already underway.

• 3. The Battle That Freed Him

  ›

  In 1560, Imagawa Yoshimoto led an army of 25,000 men into Oda territory. Ieyasu, still serving the Imagawa, was assigned a separate mission during this campaign: capture the stronghold of Marune. As a result, he was not present at Okehazama when Nobunaga's forces killed Yoshimoto in a surprise assault. Ieyasu captured Marune castle, then learned his lord was dead.

  He sent lookouts to assess the situation and retreated from Odaka Castle at midnight, heading back toward Okazaki with Asai Michitada as a guide. The Mizuno clan's forces blocked their path at Chiryu, but because Michitada was with them, they were not attacked. Ieyasu entered the Daijuji Temple outside Okazaki Castle the following day. With the Imagawa in confusion and their leadership destroyed, Ieyasu marched his men into the abandoned Okazaki Castle and reclaimed his ancestral seat. He was seventeen years old.

  The decision he made next defined everything that followed. Rather than declaring independence immediately and inviting retaliation from the still-significant Imagawa remnants, he moved carefully. His wife, Lady Tsukiyama, and his infant son Nobuyasu were still held hostage in Sunpu by Yoshimoto's heir, Imagawa Ujizane. Ieyasu negotiated in secret, reaching out to Oda Nobunaga. In 1561, he captured Kaminogo Castle, which was held by Udono Nagamochi. His forces under Hattori Hanzo attacked at night and set fire to the castle, capturing two of Udono's sons. He then used them as hostages to trade for the return of his wife and son. Only after that exchange did he openly break with the Imagawa. The man who had spent years as someone else's hostage had learned exactly how to use hostages himself.

• 4. Mikawa, Gunpowder, and the Ikkō-ikki

  ›

  On the 15th of January, 1564, Ieyasu concentrated his forces to attack the Ikkō-ikki movement in Mikawa Province. The Ikkō-ikki were a coalition of peasants and militant Buddhist monks under the Jodo Shinshu sect who rejected the feudal order. They were not an abstract threat: some of Ieyasu's own vassals, including Honda Masanobu and Natsume Yoshinobu, had deserted him to join the rebellion out of religious conviction. Other core vassals who shared the same faith, such as Honda Tadakatsu and Ishikawa Ienari, made the opposite choice and stayed loyal.

  At the Battle of Azukizaka, Ieyasu fought on the front lines and was struck by several bullets. He survived because none of them penetrated his armor. Both sides in that battle were using the gunpowder weapons the Portuguese had introduced to Japan roughly twenty years earlier. Ieyasu won, and by 1565 he was master of all of Mikawa Province.

  In 1566, on the counsel of his senior vassal Sakai Tadatsugu, he formally broke with the Imagawa clan and began reforming the political order of Mikawa. He created a military governance system he called the Sanbi no gunsei, dividing Mikawa into three administrative sections. The following year, 1567, he adopted the name Tokugawa Ieyasu and sought recognition from the Imperial Court as Mikawa-no-kami, Lord of Mikawa. The application required an imperial noble named Konoe Motohisa to locate a genealogical document through the Manri-koji family that could connect the Matsudaira name to the Minamoto clan. The document was found. The court approved. A man who had been a hostage was now a recognized lord with an ancient lineage, whether that lineage was genuine or constructed.

• 5. Surviving Takeda Shingen

  ›

  In October 1571, Takeda Shingen broke his alliance with the Oda-Tokugawa forces and began driving toward Kyoto, starting by invading Tokugawa territory in Totomi. His first targets were Nishikawa Castle, Yoshida Castle, and Futamata Castle. After besieging Futamata in 1572, Shingen pressed toward Hamamatsu, the capital Ieyasu had established in 1570. Ieyasu called on Nobunaga, who sent roughly 3,000 troops. Early in 1573, the two armies met north of Hamamatsu at the Battle of Mikatagahara.

  The Takeda army was considerably larger and inflicted heavy casualties on Ieyasu's forces. Ieyasu retreated to his castle, convinced by his generals despite his initial reluctance. What happened next became one of the stranger episodes of his career. Back in his fortress, Ieyasu ordered his men to light torches, beat drums, and leave the castle gates standing open, as if welcoming the retreating warriors. The Takeda generals, expecting an ambush, made camp for the night rather than besieging the castle. During those hours, a band of Tokugawa soldiers raided the Takeda camp. The resulting disruption was enough to convince Shingen to call off the offensive entirely. Shingen would not get another chance. He died from unknown causes shortly after the siege of Noda Castle that same year.

  The conflict with the Takeda did not end there. Shingen's son Takeda Katsuyori continued it, and Ieyasu and Katsuyori fought for years. In June 1575, when Katsuyori attacked Yoshida Castle and besieged Nagashino Castle, Ieyasu appealed to Nobunaga, who arrived personally with 30,000 men. The combined Oda-Tokugawa force of 38,000 won a decisive victory at Nagashino. Katsuyori survived and retreated to Kai Province. For seven more years, Ieyasu's forces steadily wrested control of Suruga Province from the Takeda. The final reckoning came in 1582, when a combined Oda-Tokugawa army drove Katsuyori to the Battle of Tenmokuzan, where Katsuyori was cornered, defeated, and committed seppuku. Nobunaga awarded Ieyasu the right to govern Suruga Province in recognition of his service.

• 6. The Flight Through Iga

  ›

  In late June 1582, Oda Nobunaga invited Ieyasu to tour the Kansai region to celebrate the Takeda's destruction. Before they could meet, Ieyasu learned that the general Akechi Mitsuhide had surrounded Nobunaga at the Honno-ji temple. Nobunaga killed himself rather than surrender. Ieyasu was now in hostile territory with only a small group of companions, including Sakai Tadatsugu, Ii Naomasa, Honda Tadakatsu, and Sakakibara Yasumasa.

  The Iga provincial route home was dangerous because of the Ochimusha-gari, gangs known as samurai hunters who preyed on scattered warriors in the chaos following Nobunaga's death. Historical sources disagree on the exact path Ieyasu took. The Portuguese missionary Luis Frois recorded in his History of Japan that during the journey, Ieyasu's retainers fought their way out of multiple raids while also paying bribes of gold and silver to outlaws who could be bought off. Matsudaira Ietada recorded in his journal, the Ietada nikki, that the escorts suffered around 200 casualties during the trek. When they arrived at Ietada's residence in Mikawa, roughly 34 personnel remained, including the senior generals Tadatsugu, Naomasa, Tadakatsu, Sakakibara, Okube Tadayo, and Hattori Hanzo.

  Historians agree that the critical passage of the journey came at Kada, a mountain pass between Kameyama and Iga, where the group survived a final attack by Ochimusha-gari outlaws before reaching friendly Koka ikki clan territory. Researcher Tatsuo Fujita of Mie University supported the theory that Ieyasu relied primarily on the protection of his senior generals during this passage, rather than the ninja escorts that popular accounts prefer. Arriving safely in Mikawa, Ieyasu immediately turned his attention to the former Takeda territories, where he expected unrest following Nobunaga's death. That expectation proved accurate.

• 7. The Road to Sekigahara

  ›

  In 1590, when Ieyasu participated in the campaign against the last holdout of the Hojo clan, the aftermath required a decision that historian Adam Sadler described as the riskiest Ieyasu ever made. Toyotomi Hideyoshi ordered Ieyasu to give up control of his five home provinces (Mikawa, Totomi, Suruga, Shinano, and Kai) and move instead to eight provinces in the Kanto region, centered on a small fishing and trading town called Edo. Edo was underdeveloped. The Hojo samurai there were recently defeated and of uncertain loyalty. Modern historian Watanabe Daimon argued that Ieyasu was not actually reluctant about this move, suspecting instead that Ieyasu saw the potential in making Edo his seat of power. Andō Yuichiro added that the transfer doubled the territory Ieyasu controlled and added new vassals on top of the armies of the Imagawa and Takeda he had already absorbed.

  In 1598, with his health failing, Hideyoshi established a Council of Five Elders to govern on behalf of his young son Hideyori. The five regents chosen were Maeda Toshiie, Mori Terumoto, Ukita Hideie, Uesugi Kagekatsu, and Ieyasu, described as the most powerful of the five. Hideyoshi died on the 18th of September, 1598. His son was five years old.

  What followed was a period of careful maneuvering. Ieyasu survived an alleged assassination attempt on the 12th of September, 1599, by three vassals of the late Hideyoshi. Rather than executing them, he accepted the counsel of Honda Masanobu to show leniency, placing some under house arrest and ordering others to relocate residences. Historian Daimon Watanabe interpreted this as a deliberate move to build alliances for the war he could see coming. The Battle of Sekigahara came in 1600. Ieyasu seized power. In 1603, the emperor appointed him shogun. Two years later, in 1605, he voluntarily resigned in favor of his son Tokugawa Hidetada, making clear that the shogunate was a Tokugawa inheritance, not a personal title. Ieyasu retained de facto control until his death in 1616. The system he built, the bakuhan system of graded rewards and punishments for the daimyo and samurai classes, kept Japan under Tokugawa rule for more than 260 years after that.