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Portrait of Ieyasu
(at the Osaka Castle Museum)

In the Sengoku period of 15th-century Japan, there were three major warlords: Oda Nobunaga (織田信長), Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉), and Tokugawa Ieyasu (德川家康). Their personalities were so distinctively different from one another that they became the subject of an old joke:

"What would the three warlords do　about a bird that refused to sing for them? Nobunaga would break the bird's neck. Hideyoshi would try everything to make the bird sing. Ieyasu would wait until the bird begins singing."

Apart from their political careers and what they mean in history, this joke shows that Ieyasu is remembered by the Japanese people as a man who ultimately rose to power with his 'patience and persistence.'

Ieyasu was born in 1542 (or 1543) as the eldest son of Matsudaira Hirotada (松平広忠), the lord of Okazaki (岡崎) Castle in Mikawa (三河)(present-day Aichi Prefecture). The Matsudaira clan became considerably weak after Hirotada's father Kiyoyasu (松平清康) was murdered, and it was dependent on aid from Imagawa Yoshimoto of Suruga-kuni (駿河國, 'kuni' being the local administrative district of the ancient Japanese Rituryou State) by the time Ieyasu was born. Anf Oda Nobuhide (Nobunaga's father) from Owari-kuni was eyeing the western part of Mikawa.

In 1549, Hirotada was killed by his senior statesmen who were in league with the Oda clan and rose in a revolt against him. Afraid that the Matsudaira clan might join forces with the Oda clan, the Imagawa clan stripped the Matsudaira clan and its vassals of their entire territories and took their wives and children hostage. As a result, Ieyasu was also taken to the Imagawa clan's territory and lived there as a hostage from the ages of eight to nineteen.

How He Became Independent Sengoku Daimyo

After a decade of living as a hostage, Ieyasu met a turning point in 1560 with the Battle of Okehazama (桶狭間), where Imagawa Yoshimoto's tens of thousands-strong army, heading westward from Suruga to occupy Kyoto, were completely defeated by Oda Nobunaga's only thousands of troops and Yoshimoto himself was killed in action.

When the news of Yoshimoto's death reached him, Ieyasu freed himself from being a hostage by escaping from the enemy's territory and into Okazai Castle. But he did not seek independence for quite some time afterwards. To avoid suspicion, he often attacked the Oda clan's fortresses in the western part of Mikawa while working with his vassals to expand his influence. In 1561, he officially turned his back against the Imagawa family.

In 1562, Ieyasu formed a secret military alliance with Oda Nobunaga, and it would last until Nobunaga's death during the Honnoji Incident of 1582. While the alliance was maintained, Nobunaga treated Ieyasu as a guest commander, and Ieyasu, in return, kept the powerful Takeda Singen (武田信玄) from the east from advancing westward.

Having sorted out the internal affairs of his base in Mikawa, Ieyasu completely drove out the Imagawa faction and unified Mikawa, finally establishing himself as independent sengoku daimyo. In 1566, he changed his family name from Matsudaira to Tokugawa (德川) belonging to the descendants of Emperor Seiwa (淸和源氏).

Seeking to Stabilize the Shogunate by Establishing the Dual Power System of Power Two Years after Taking Office as Shogun

Painting of the early 17th-century Edo Castle
(江戶圖展風)

In 1582, after Nobunaga's death in Honnoji, Hideyoshi decided that Nobugana would be succeeded by his eldest grandson Sanposi (三法師), who was no more than three years old. But this meant that Hideyoshi essentially proclaimed himself the de facto successor of Nobunaga.

Ieyasu had continued to expand his influence and seized control of three regions by then: Suruga, Totomi, and Mikawa. He joined forces with Nobukatsu, the son of Nobunaga, and fought a battle with Hideyoshi that would end in a peace agreement as Nobukatsu got scared and independently surrendered to Hideyoshi, even though the military power of Ieyasu prevailed. In the end, Ieyasu showed respect to Hideyoshi as his vassal. But Hideyoshi treated Ieyasu as special daimyo.

In 1590, Ieyasu relocated his base to Edu (Tokyo) at Hideyoshi's order, and served as a mediator between Hideyoshi and other daimyos. By defending the generals of the militarist faction under Hideyoshi's command, including Fukushima Masanori (福島正則), Kato Kiyomasa (加藤清正), Kuroda Nagamasa (黑田長政), and Asano Nagamasa (淺野長政), he won their confidence and trust. This was one of the main reasons why he could successfully get the better of his opponents and establish the Edo shogunate after the death of Hideyoshi.

As the rift between the militarist and non-militarist factions deepened following the death of Hideyoshi, Ieyasu allied with the militarist faction and began to take the reins of politics. In the Battle of Sekigahara (關ケ原) in 1600, he successfully fought off the western army led by Ishida Mitsunari (石田三成), a faithful servant of Hideyoshi, because he had already won over a majority of the daimyo from the western army even before the battle began. In other words, the victory was a result of the political acumen of Ieyasu, who took full advantage of the situation that Hideyoshi's staff were divided.

Handprint of Ieyasu at Kunozan Toshogu
(久能山東照宮)

In 1603, once he eliminated his opponents by winning the Battle of Sekigahara, he established the Edo shogunate and assumed the top military position seiidaishogun (征夷大將軍). However, he abdicated in favor of his son Hidetada (秀忠) just two years after taking office as shogun. By doing so, Ieyasu established the dual system of power in which Hidetada demanded loyalty from the daimyo in exchange for the authority to rule over their territories while Ieyasu remained in power and actually controlled the shogunate. In other words, Ieyasu tried to pass on power to his heir and solidify the ruling system while he was alive, because he knew from what had happened after the death of Hideyoshi that an unstable government was very likely to fall if the succession of power took place after the death of the man of supreme power.

To eliminate his powerful potential enemy Hideyori (the son of Hideyoshi), Ieyasu set out to attack Osaka Castle himself in 1614. He was already over seventy years old. In 1615, Ieyasu finally captured Osaka Castle and exterminated the Toyotomi clan. He died the following year. This 1615 battle in Osaka put an end to the Warring States period, a period of internal conflict in Japanese history which is often said to have begun with the Onin War (1467-1477) during the Muromachi period.