This cunning Japanese shogun outlasted his rivals to found his dynasty

Tokugawa Ieyasu was not a young man when he became shogun in 1603. His rise to power was long and slow, a journey that had begun when he was just 15 years old. Along the way—through a combination of luck, strategy, patience, and wisdom—he would survive the turbulent end to Japan’s medieval Sengoku (“Warring States”) period and emerge at age 60 in control of Japan. When he died in 1616, he left the nation transformed  and his family firmly in power.

In the 17th century, Japan’s official head of state was the emperor, who was based in Kyoto. The emperor’s shogun was the military commander, a de facto ruler who was feared and respected by all. The title of shogun is adapted from the term seii taishogun, meaning “supreme commander who subdues the barbarians.” The position was officially appointed by the emperor, but shoguns could and did form hereditary dynasties that passed power from one generation to the next.

Tokugawa Ieyasu was no different; he made moves and enacted policies during his reign that ensured his family’s control over Japan long after his death. His descendants would continue to rule Japan for more than 250 years.

Coming together

Born in 1543 to a modest family, Ieyasu began his career as an administrator and soldier in the service of other lords. The violence and instability of the Warring States period long predated his birth; its roots lay in the late 12th-century conflict between rival noble clans, principally the Taira and the Minamoto. In the year 1185, the Minamoto clan eliminated their Taira enemies and established the first shogunate, or military dictatorship, with Minamoto Yoritomo as its leader. The shogunate system itself would last for 700 years.

The daimyo, regional feudal lords, swore loyalty to the emperor, who was largely a ceremonial and religious figure. It was shogunate founder Yoritomo and his successors who wielded true executive power. Yet despite the appearance of an absolute monopoly, the shogunate (also called bakufu) often faced rebellion from the daimyo in the following centuries. Anarchy would reach its climax after the Onin War (1467-1477), a succession dispute over the shogunate that triggered along civil war. The turbulence lasted almost 150 years, a period known as the Warring States. 

In the 1570s, three warriors would rise to power and bring this chaotic period to an end. They were Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu. A feudal lord and feared military leader, Nobunaga headed the powerful Oda clan after eliminating his local rivals in the 1550s. In the following decade, he turned his attentions toward to the rest of Japan and launched a campaign to secure power on a larger stage. In 1562 Tokugawa Ieyasu allied his clan and his warriors with the Oda clan where he would gain power and influence while serving as a commander under Nobunaga.

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Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s beginnings were humble; he began his career as a foot soldier in the Oda army. Nobunaga noticed his talents and nurtured them, allowing the young man to rise through the ranks and become a lord himself.

After Nobunaga’s assassination in 1582, Hideyoshi avenged his leader’s death, taking power and ruling Japan for some 12 years. When Hideyoshi died in 1598, his five-year-old son, Toyotomi Hideyori, was named successor. A regency council was established to govern the country until the boy reached the age of majority.

Among the five council members was Tokugawa Ieyasu, who had risen through the ranks of the Oda clan and proved his loyalty. A powerful general and daimyo, Ieyasu had an army at his command—and a tense relationship with Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Upon Hideyoshi’s death, Tokugawa Ieyasu broke his oath of allegiance to the Toyotomi dynasty and seized power as lord of Japan in 1599.

Another member of the regency council, Ishida Mitsunari, moved to defend the Toyotomi heir. On October 21, 1600, the two sides came face-to-face at the Battle of Sekigahara. This climactic battle brought the Warring States period to a definitive end when Tokugawa Ieyasu’s forces secured victory.

Officers loyal to Toyotomi Hideyori who managed to survive the battle were soon captured and killed. A week later, the severed heads of the vanquished were hung from trees on an avenue in Kyoto, the imperial capital, as a warning. The young Toyotomi was forced to abandon any claims to power, although Tokugawa Ieyasu did allow him to keep the lordship of Osaka Castle. Over the next three years, Tokugawa consolidated his power, finally establishing himself as shogun in 1603, the first in a dynasty that would govern the destiny of Japan until 1868.

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Policies and power

Such an achievement could have represented the pinnacle of a lifetime for the 60-year-old Ieyasu, but he knew he had to structure his regime and its policies to ensure that his legacy would endure. Unlike his former allies, Nobunaga and Hideyoshi, Tokugawa Ieyasu would not only hold on to the power he had gained, he would pass it on to his descendants.

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One of his first policies addressed firearms. Europeans had introduced them to Japan in the mid-16th century. Ieyasu knew their power well: In May 1564, as a young man, he had almost died when a bullet pierced his armor. 

Eleven years later, he’d watched as Nobunaga used European-derived weaponry to win the Battle of Nagashino. The tanegashima, Japanese-made arquebuses, eclipsed the swords of the samurai, the hereditary military nobility. However skillfully a samurai wielded his traditional weapon, the long matchlock guns were much more effective. The new shogun requisitioned a large proportion of the arquebuses in use across Japan. He stored them his new capital city, Edo (modern-day Tokyo).

Ieyasu sought to control the daimyo, who he viewed as causing instability during the Warring States period. He classified them according to the degree of loyalty they showed to him. The lords defeated at the Battle of Sekigahara had their lands seized. Ieyasu either transferred these farms to his trusted generals or kept them for the shogunate. A second group who potentially threatened the interests of the Tokugawa were the powerful tozama daimyo, nonhereditary feudal lords he uprooted from their homes and relocated throughout Japan. In their new homes, the shogun could keep them separated and under surveillance.

Ieyasu also reduced the possibility of rebellion by preventing a daimyo from having more than one fortress within his fiefdom. The policy, institutionalized by his successors, led to the destruction of more than 600 fortifications and citadels across Japan. By contrast, the great Tokugawa fortress in Edo grew larger and larger. High-quality materials, salvaged from the daiymo-owned buildings that had been demolished, were used to expand it.

But perhaps the most effective method of keeping the great feudal lords under control was to force many of them to reside in Edo for periods. The move put an enormous financial burden on the daimyo, limiting their ability to maintain troops that would threaten the shogun. At the same time, having daimyo in Edo brought a significant injection of wealth to the city. By the time Tokugawa Iemitsu, Ieyasu’s grandson, became the third Tokugawa shogun, the practice of Edo residency was institutionalized in a policy designed to maintain central control (sankin-kotai); a daimyo had to stay in Edo for a full year out of every two.

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Securing a dynasty

In 1605, Ieyasu abdicated in favor of his third son, Hidetada. Ieyasu hoped to push Hidetada into gaining ruling experience while he retreated into the role of ogosho, or shadow shogun. In practice, however, Ieyasu continued to hold the reins of government. In 1611 Ieyasu had no qualms about deposing the emperor Go-Yozei and replacing him with Go-Mizunoo. The latter was a more suitable age for marrying Ieyasu’s granddaughter Masako, a union that Ieyasu duly arranged.

With almost all political opposition tied up by 1614, only one loose end remained: Toyotomi Hideyori, the young regent who Ieyasu, as a member of the regency council, had vowed to protect. The shogun had let the young man live in the Osaka fortress and tried to secure Hideyori’s loyalty by marrying him to one of his daughters, Sen. But when Hideyori came of age, some generals and daimyos saw in the young man a plausible alternative to Tokugawa power.

But a sly Ieyasu saw the threat coming and was prepared. In 1614, under the guise that Hideyori was plotting a rebellion, Ieyasu led his army to Osaka to lay siege to Hideyori’s seemingly impregnable fortress. The siege lasted several months until finally, in June 1615, the troops of both sides (300,000 soldiers in all) faced each other in a bloody pitched battle. Realizing his defeat, Hideyori committed seppuku (suicide by disembowelment), a practice seen by warriors as honorable. The Tokugawa troops massacred Hideyori’s followers in a bloodbath that left observers stunned.

In the words of the Spanish merchant Bernadino de Ávila Girón, who witnessed the events: “Osaka was Homer’s Troy that day. Taking pity, the mothers threw their children off the castle walls, or else they smashed them against the wall. I pray to God that I never attend another such hell.” During the battle, Ieyasu showed no mercy, even to his great-grandson Kunimatsu, son of Hideyori and Sen. The boy, aged just seven, was beheaded and took the Toyotomi lineage with him to the grave.

The Siege of Osaka consolidated the Tokugawa dynasty’s grip on Japan, and it would not let go for centuries; it held onto power until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Tokugawa Ieyasu died in 1616, and his heirs maintained absolute authority over Japan, imposing a strict class system on its people while keeping the nation isolated from foreign powers.

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While many official histories regard Tokugawa Ieyasu as an extraordinary politician and hero, his rule and legacy have come to be viewed with more ambivalence by historians. If the shogun achieved stability, he did so at the cost of taking away freedoms from fellow citizens. He stamped the name of Tokugawa across the annals for generations, but did so with the blood of thousands.