10 questions · History
Tokugawa Ieyasu was born in 1543 at Okazaki Castle in Mikawa Province, the son of a minor lord of the Matsudaira house, a family squeezed between powerful neighbours. He spent his childhood as a bargaining chip: first he fell into the hands of the Oda, then he lived for years as a hostage of the Imagawa in Sunpu. The boy, then called Takechiyo, learned early the quality that would define his whole life: to wait, to watch, and to act only when the moment had come. When the Imagawa lost their lord at Okehazama in 1560, he struck out on his own and in 1562 allied himself with Oda Nobunaga, the rising lord of Owari. For two decades he stayed loyal and survived bitter defeats at his side. After Nobunaga’s death he came to terms with Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who moved him to the Kantō plain in 1590. Ieyasu turned the modest castle town of Edo into his new seat, a choice from which today’s Tokyo grew. After Hideyoshi died, Ieyasu reached for supreme power. At the Battle of Sekigahara in the autumn of 1600 he defeated the Western Army, and in 1603 the emperor appointed him shogun. Only two years later he handed the office to his son Hidetada, yet from his retirement in Sunpu he kept pulling the strings. Among his advisers was even an Englishman: the navigator William Adams, shipwrecked in Japan in 1600, who became a samurai under the name Miura Anjin. Ieyasu died in 1616. A year later his remains were moved to the Tōshō-gū at Nikkō, where he is still worshipped as a deity. A well-known saying compares the three unifiers of Japan to a cuckoo that will not sing: Nobunaga kills it, Hideyoshi makes it sing, Ieyasu waits until it sings. The shogunate he founded lasted for more than 260 years.
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Sekigahara
Several lords changing sides in mid-battle, above all Kobayakawa Hideaki, decided the day in his favour.
💡 Did you know? It is often called the most important battle in Japanese history, because it opened the way to the shogunate.
1603
The appointment began the Edo period, which lasted until 1868.
💡 Did you know? As early as 1605 he passed the office to his son, to secure the succession while he was still alive.
Imagawa
His father had sent him as a pledge for an alliance; on the way he first fell into the hands of the Oda.
💡 Did you know? Only after Imagawa Yoshimoto died at Okehazama in 1560 could he return to Okazaki.
Matsudaira
In 1566 the imperial court allowed him to call himself Tokugawa from then on.
💡 Did you know? Branches of the Matsudaira family remained important lordly houses throughout the Edo period.
Edo
Hideyoshi had moved him to the Kantō plain in 1590; Ieyasu turned Edo Castle into Japan’s largest fortress.
💡 Did you know? In the 18th century Edo, with about a million inhabitants, was one of the largest cities in the world.
Oda Nobunaga
The alliance lasted twenty years, until Nobunaga’s death in 1582, and was one of the most durable of its time.
💡 Did you know? Under pressure from Nobunaga, Ieyasu even had to order his eldest son Nobuyasu to commit suicide in 1579.
Tōshō-gū
His body was moved there in 1617; his grandson Iemitsu later had the shrine lavishly enlarged.
💡 Did you know? The shrine’s stable is decorated with the famous three monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.
Tokugawa Hidetada
Ieyasu retired to Sunpu but, as the “Ōgosho”, kept ruling behind the scenes until his death.
💡 Did you know? Hidetada was actually his third son; the eldest was dead and the second had been adopted into another family.
William Adams
He was stranded in Japan in 1600 aboard the Dutch ship “Liefde” and built European-style ships for Ieyasu.
💡 Did you know? Adams was never allowed to return home and died in Japan in 1620; his story inspired the novel “Shōgun”.
Mikawa
He was born at Okazaki Castle, his family’s seat in the east of today’s Aichi Prefecture.
💡 Did you know? His loyal retainers from home, the Mikawa samurai, later formed the core of the Tokugawa vassals.
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