Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Tokugawa Ieyasu (also (archaic) Iyeyasu; 徳川 家康 Tokugawa Ieyasu January 31 1543–June 1 1616) was the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, and is commonly known as one of the "three great unifiers" of feudal Japan (the other two are Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi).

Ieyasu was originally daimyo (大名) of Mikawa (eastern part of present-day Aichi prefecture) but was displaced to the Kanto region during Hideyoshi's rule. Ieyasu's influence made him an important ally of Nobunaga. After Nobunaga died and Hideyoshi became Japan's dominant ruler, Ieyasu was named as one of five regents (tairo) with the responsibility of looking after Hideyoshi's son, Toyotomi Hideyori.

When Hideyoshi died in 1598, Hideyori was only five years old. The boy was placed in the care of Toyotomi's closest ally, Ishida Mitsunari, who attempted to hold the Toyotomi coalition together. Ieyasu, however, saw a chance to usurp power from the Toyotomi loyalists, and assembled an "eastern army" to take on Ishida.

The ensuing Battle of Sekigahara (1600) ended in a crushing defeat for Ishida's "western army." In 1603, Ieyasu became shogun of an almost entirely unified Japan, a concept that had been abandoned by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He abdicated in 1605 in favor of his son Tokugawa Hidetada.

The Tokugawa shogunate he founded would endure until the mid-19th century. While it was a time of strict seclusion from the outside world, it was also blessed with peace and stability.

Ieyasu had many sons. He established three of them as the heads of collateral households that would be the daimyo of major han and would, if necessary, supply future shoguns. The senior house was the Owari Tokugawa, with its castle at Nagoya, a strategically important location on the Tokaido in present-day Aichi Prefecture. Next was the Kii (or Kishu) Tokugawa, at Wakayama. This location, south of Osaka and Kyoto (where the shogunate maintained strongholds) provided a significant presence in Kansai and on the Seto Inland Sea. The eighth shogun, Yoshimune, was born into the Kii line. Third was the Mito Tokugawa, its domain controlling a major part of the Kanto along the Pacific coast. Other sons took the Matsudaira surname (Ieyasu's hereditary surname) and became daimyo of lesser han.

Ieyasu's rise is among the most famous stories in Japanese history. It was adapted by James Clavell for the novel Shogun. In the novel (and subsequent mini-series), Ieyasu was portrayed as a fictional Shogun named Toranaga.

Ieyasu was enshrined in Nikko after his death, and his mausoleum, Nikko Toshogu (日光東照宮), is a popular tourist destination today. Sargent (1894; The Forest Flora of Japan) recorded that a daimyo who was too poor to offer a stone lantern at the funeral requested instead to be allowed to plant an avenue of sugi, 'that future visitors might be protected from the heat of the sun'. The offer was accepted; the avenue, which still exists, is over 65km (40 miles) long, and 'has not its equal in stately grandeur'.

External links

For more detailed bios:

• http://www.ox.compsoc.net/~gemini/simons/historyweb/tokugawa-ieyasu.html
• http://www.samurai-archives.com/ieyasu.html

de:Tokugawa Ieyasu fr:Ieyasu Tokugawa ko:도쿠가와 이에야스 ja:徳川家康 zh:德川家康