Shogun, unifier of Japan
Tokugawa Ieyasu
徳川家康 · 1543–1616 · Azuchi–Momoyama to Edo period
Tokugawa Ieyasu (徳川家康) ended a hundred years of civil war in Japan. He founded the family that ruled the country in peace for more than 250 years. Ieyasu was patient where his rivals were reckless. Three great warlords united Japan, and he was the last of them standing. He was also the one who managed to keep what the other two had won.
The patience that won
Ieyasu began as a minor lord, and as a boy he lived as a hostage in another clan. For decades he served as an ally and follower of two warlords, Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. All that time he waited for his moment. When Hideyoshi died, Ieyasu seized it. At the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, he crushed his opponents in a single day. In 1603 the emperor made him shōgun, the military ruler of Japan. A well-known saying compares the three men. It asks what each would do with a cuckoo that will not sing. Nobunaga would kill it. Hideyoshi would coax it. Ieyasu would simply wait until it sang on its own.
The god of Nikkō
Ieyasu ruled from his new capital, Edo, today's Tokyo. There he set up a system of rules that kept the country stable for generations. After his death, Japan worshipped him as a god, Tōshō Daigongen, at the mountain shrine of Nikkō. His grandson built the bright Tōshō-gū shrine there in his honour, rich in gold and lacquer. The patient warlord became a god who watched over the peace he had built.
Portrait: Kanō Tan'yū · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
