When you close your eyes and you picture a samurai,
what's the first image that pops into your head?
Oh, for most people it's got to be the charge,
right? The warrior screaming, riding into a hail
of arrows. Exactly. Choosing that glorious death
over, you know, a life of dishonor. We are just
so culturally conditioned to love the tragic
hero, the figures like the last samurai who go
down in a blaze of glory. It creates such a powerful
narrative. We're drawn to that tragedy, the fleeting
nature of the cherry blossom falling. But if
you actually lived in feudal Japan, especially
in the Sugoku period, that glorious death, that
was the easy way out. Right. And that's why today
we aren't talking about the guys who guide beautifully.
We are talking about the man who did something
infinitely harder. He survived. He survived.
And he didn't just survive. He won. We're talking
about the ultimate survivor, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
If you've been watching the show Shugen, you'll
know him as the model for Lord Torunaga. But
the real historical figure is, well, he's so
much more complex than any fiction could possibly
capture. This is the man who looked at a Japan
that had been bleeding itself dry for a century
and just said, enough. He established a peace
that lasted for over 250 years. And to really
grasp the magnitude of that, you have to understand
the competition. Ieyasu wasn't operating in a
vacuum. He was the third of the so -called three
great unifiers. The big three. You've got Oda
Nobunaga, who is this. terrifying, brilliant
disruptor. Then you have Toyotomi Hideyoshi,
the peasant, who somehow became the supreme ruler
of Japan. And then you have Ieyasu. And there's
that famous Zen proverb, right? The one about
the bird that wouldn't sing, which supposedly
describes their personalities perfectly. It's
a classic. Nobunaga says, if the bird doesn't
sing, kill it. Brutal. To the point. Hideyoshi
says, if the bird doesn't sing, I'll make it
sing. Okay. A bit more creative, a bit more forceful.
But Ieyasu, he just says, if the bird doesn't
sing, I'll wait for it to sing. And see, that's
where I think people get the wrong idea about
him. They hear weight, and they think he was
passive. They imagine him just sitting on his
porch, sipping tea, while everyone else is out
there killing each other. Uh -huh. But looking
at the sources, that interpretation is just...
It's completely wrong. Totally wrong. It is.
Yasu's weighting wasn't inactivity, it was a
weapon. There's another saying, the one about
the rice cake of the realm, or tenkomochi. Right.
Nobunaga pounds the rice cake. Hideyoshi needs
it. And in the end, Ayasu sits down and eats
it. Which, again, sounds like you just showed
up for dessert. Yeah, it sounds like you got
lucky. But our mission for this deep dive is
to unpack exactly how he managed to eat that
rice cake without choking on it. Because this
wasn't luck. This was a masterclass in psychology
and logistics and in knowing exactly when to
lose a battle in order to win a war. And if we
really want to understand that almost supernatural
patience, that ability to endure the unendurable,
we have to start at the very beginning. We have
to look at his childhood. We do, because calling
it rough is probably the understatement of the
century. All right, let's get into section one
here. The boy who is everyone's prisoner. Iyasu
is born in 1543, and his original name is Matsudaira
Takekiyo. Right. And his father is a minor lord,
Matsudaira Hirotada. And if you just look at
a map of their territory, you can see the problem
immediately. It's a nightmare location. It really
was a geopolitical trap. The Matsudaira lands
were this tiny buffer zone squeezed between two
massive superpowers. To the west, you have the
Oda clan Nobunaga's family who are aggressive.
They're expansionists. And in the east? The Imagawa
clan. They're aristocratic, wealthy, incredibly
powerful. And poor Hiro Tata is just trying to
keep his small territory from being swallowed
whole by one side or the other. So his father
makes this desperate choice. He needs protection
from the Oda, so he goes to the Imagawa and asks
for an alliance. But in feudal Japan, you don't...
Don't just sign a piece of paper, do you? No,
no. You need skin in the game. You need collateral.
The Imagawa agreed to the alliance, but the price
was that Hirotada had to send his heir, his five
-year -old son, Takekyo, to the Imagawa capital
as a hostage. Wow. Just try to imagine being
five years old, you're packed onto a palanquin,
you're taken away from your mother, and you're
sent to live with complete strangers. But he
never even makes it to the Imagawa capital, does
he? No. And this is the first insane twist in
a life that is just full of them. The convoy
he's in is intercepted on the road. By who? The
boy is kidnapped by the enemy, Oda Nobuhide,
who is Nobunaga's father. So now he's a hostage
of the very people his dad is trying to fight
against. Exactly. And the Oda lord sends a message
to Ieyasu's father saying, Look, I have your
son. Break your alliance with the Imagawa and
join me or I will kill the boy. And this is the
moment. This is what must have forged him. I
think so, because his father receives this threat,
and he refuses. He refuses, knowing they're going
to kill his five -year -old son. He sends a message
back. He tells the Oda Lord, go ahead, kill him.
If I sacrifice my own son to keep my word to
the Imagawa, it will only prove to the world
how loyal and honorable I am. That is. Just chilling.
I mean, from a samurai code perspective, I guess
that's the ultimate display of honor. But for
a little boy, hearing that your own father is
willing to let you die just to prove a political
point. It teaches you a brutal lesson very, very
early on. Yeah. You are a political pawn. Your
life is currency. You are not a person. You are
an asset to be traded or, you know, discarded
if necessary. But surprisingly, the Oda lord
didn't actually kill him. Why not? What stopped
him? We don't know for sure. Yeah. Perhaps he
was impressed by the father's resolve, or maybe
he just realized that a live hostage is always
more useful than a dead one. So Ieyasu spends
the next few years in captivity at a temple in
Nagoya, deep in Oda territory. And this is where
the legends come in, right? There are all these
stories that during this time, he met a young
Oda Nobunaga. It's one of those historical maybe
moments that's just too good to ignore. You have
these two future unifiers. Nobunaga, the wild,
unruly youth who disregarded all tradition, and
Ieyasu, the quiet, observant prisoner. Wow. Just
circling each other's orbit from the very beginning?
Whether they formally met or just knew of each
other, they were right there. But eventually,
the political winds shifted again. Ieyasu's father
died. And through a really complex prisoner exchange
after a siege, Iyasu was finally sent to where
he was supposed to go in the first place. To
the Imagawa. To the Imagawa. So he goes from
being a prisoner of the Oda to being a prisoner
of the Imagawa. But the vibe was different there,
wasn't it? Oh, completely different. He was taken
to Sunpu, the Imagawa capital. This is a place
of high culture. modeled after Kyoto. The Imagawa
were aristocrats as much as they were warriors.
So he wasn't locked in a cell. Not at all. Iyasu,
who's now called Motoyasu, was treated like a
VIP. He was educated in the classics, he learned
military strategy, and he was basically being
groomed to be a loyal vassal. They even married
him to a relative of the Imagawa lord, a woman
named Lady Tsukiyama. It sounds like a gilded
cage. He's being set up to be a loyal general
for the people who own him. And for a while,
it seems to work. He fights for them. He wins
battles for them. He seems resigned to his fate
as a subordinate. He really does. Until 1560.
The Battle of Okehazam. This is the first major
pivot point in his life, and you could argue
it's the most important one. Okay, let's unpack
that. Section two, the pivot. So the Imagawa
Lord Yoshimoto, he decides it's time to finally
crush the upstart Oda clan. He gathers this massive
army, what was it, 25 ,000 men? At least. A huge
force. And he marches west. And Yasu is part
of this invasion. He is. He's commanding the
vanguard. He's sent ahead to capture a fortress
called Maroon. And he does it perfectly. He's
a competent, loyal soldier. He captures the fort
and then he just waits for new orders. But while
he's sitting there waiting, Oda Nobunaga pulls
off the impossible. The surprise attack. The
ultimate gamble. Nobunaga, with just a tiny force,
uses a thunderstorm as cover to sneak up on the
main Imagawa camp. He launches this lightning
raid and kills Imagawa Yoshimoto himself. The
head of the snake is cut off. Just like that.
The invincible warlord is dead. The massive army
just dissolves in panic and chaos. So Ieyasu
is sitting in this captured fortress and he gets
the news. Now the traditional samurai expectation
here would be what? To march to his lord's death
site and commit seppuku? Right. Or to launch
a suicide charge against the Oda to avenge his
master. That's the honor play. That's what the
tragic hero we talked about does. Ieyasu. You
look at the board. He sees the Imagawa are headless
and chaotic. He sees an opening. He retreats,
not to fight, but back to his own ancestral castle
in Okazaki. He kicks out the Imagawa garrison
and he locks the door. He declares independence.
He reclaims his birthright. And then he makes
the most pragmatic, cold -blooded move imaginable.
He allies with the man who just killed his master.
He forms the Kyosu alliance with Oda Nobunaga.
It's purely transactional. It's like, you killed
my boss. Great, now I'm free. Let's work together.
But... There's a massive complication. His wife
and his young son are still back in the Imagoa
capital. Yep. They are effectively hostages.
And now he is a traitor in the eyes of the Imagoa.
So they're furious. They are absolutely going
to execute his family. Right. He also needs to
get them out. But he can't march an army all
the way to Sunpu. So he has to get creative.
This is where we see the heist movie aspect.
of history. And this is where Hattori Hanzo comes
into the picture. And I feel like we have to
clarify here, pop culture has turned him into
like a ninja wizard who can teleport. But he
was a real guy, right? Oh, absolutely. He was
a real samurai from the Eger region, a place
famous for unconventional warfare. He wasn't
casting spells, but he's basically running black
ops. So what does Ieyasu have him do? He tasks
Hanzo with a stealth mission. They infiltrate
a castle held by the Imagawa, and they capture
two high -ranking members of the Udono family.
who were important vassals of the Yamagawa. So
he's kidnapping them for a prisoner swap. Exactly.
Ieyasu then trades the Yudono hostages for his
wife and son. And it works. He gets his family
back. So he's got his family back, he's got his
alliance with Nobunaga, but things aren't exactly
smooth sailing at home. We have to talk about
the Ikechiki Uprising, because this really tests
his leadership style in a big way. The Ikechiki
were a nightmare for every samurai lord. They
were this coalition of militant monks and peasants,
all united by a radical form of pure land Buddhism.
And they didn't answer to feudal laws, did they?
Nope. They answered to their faith. They controlled
a huge chunk of Ieyasu's own home province, Mikawa.
They refused to pay taxes, and they were heavily
armed. And the really scary part for Ieyasu was
that it wasn't just, you know, peasants with
pitchforks. Some of his own samurai started defecting
to join the monks, right? Yes, and that was the
real threat. Their religious loyalty was stronger
than their feudal loyalty to him. Men he trusted,
like Hana Masanobu, turned against him. It became
a bitter, nasty civil war right in his own backyard.
And Ieyasu fought on the front lines. I read
there are records of bullets literally striking
his armor. He barely survived. He did. But here
is the key insight. When he finally wins, when
he crushes the rebellion and burns their temples,
you expect him to go full tyrant. You expect
mass executions. Especially of the guys who betrayed
him. Right. But he doesn't do that. Yeah. He
displays this just terrifying level of rationality.
He looks at the defectors, specifically a guy
like Honda Masanobu, and he thinks this man is
a traitor, but he's also a brilliant strategist.
And right now I need brilliance more than I need
revenge. So he forgives him. Just like that.
He welcomes him back. And Honda Masanobu goes
on to become Ieyasu's closest advisor, his right
-hand man, for decades. That is a superpower.
The ability to just suppress your ego, suppress
your anger, and make the cold calculation that
a live asset is better than a dead enemy. It's
a theme we will see again and again and again
with him. He turns enemies into tools. But just
as he secures his base at home, he runs into
a force of nature that he cannot manipulate.
He runs into Takeda Shingen. The Tiger of Kai.
Section 3. The Crucible. This is the Battle of
Miketayohara in 1573. And honestly, this is the
only time we see Ieyasu make a truly stupid mistake,
and it seems to be born of pride. It was a complete
disaster. Takeda Shingen had the most feared
cavalry in Japan. He was on the march, moving
through Ieyasu's territory on his way to the
capital. Yasu's advisors, and even Nobunaga himself,
told him, do not fight him in the open. Stay
in your castle. Let him pass. Wait him out. But
Yasu doesn't listen. He rides out. He couldn't
stand the idea of the Takeda army just marching
through his backyard without a challenge. He
felt he had to prove himself. So he met them
on the Miketegahara Plateau. And the Takeda army
absolutely dismantled him. It wasn't even a battle.
It was a massacre. Ieyasu barely escaped with
his life. There's a famous story that he was
so terrified during the retreat that he actually
lost control of his bowels on the saddle. And
being Ieyasu, he later commissioned a portrait
of himself looking miserable and defeated. It's
called The Frowning Image. To hang on his wall
and remind himself never to be that. arrogant
ever again. Wow. But the immediate problem was
that he had fled back to Hamamatsu Castle with
just a handful of men. The entire Takeda army
was right behind him. He had no troops to man
the walls. He was trapped. So he pulls the empty
fort strategy. This is straight out of the Chinese
classic romance of the Three Kingdoms. It's the
ultimate bluff. It is. He orders the castle gates
to be flung wide open. He orders huge bonfires
to be lit in the courtyard. And then he orders
a musician to sit up on the ramparts and beat
a large war drum in a slow, steady, calm rhythm.
I mean, imagine the psychological pressure. You
are completely defenseless and your only shield
is a bluff. The decaded generals arrive at the
castle. They see the open gates. They hear the
calm drumming and they completely overthink it.
They think it's a trap. They think this is too
easy. It has to be a trap. The courtyard must
be a kill zone filled with muskets and archers.
So instead of storming in and ending Iyasu's
life right then and there, They make camp for
the night to be cautious, and Ieyasu survives.
He learned caution the hard way. But survival
in this era required more than just clever bluffs.
It required sacrifices, that. Well, they make
your stomach turn. We have to discuss the Nobyasu
incident in 1579. This is the darkest chapter
in his life, without a doubt. Ieyasu's powerful
ally, Oda Nobunaga, begins to suspect that Ieyasu's
wife, Lady Tsukuyama, and his eldest son and
heir, Nobuyasu, are conspiring with the Takeda
clan against him. Okay, but was there any truth
to it? Was it real? Historians are really split.
Lady Tsukuyama certainly hated Nobunaga, and
for some pretty good reasons. But whether there
was an actual plot is debatable. In the end,
it didn't matter to Nobunaga. He sent an order
to Ieyasu. What was the order? Execute your wife
and your son. Just like that, an order, this
is the ultimate test. If Ieyasu refuses, the
alliance with Nobunaga is broken, the Oda army
will invade, and the Tokugawa clan will be wiped
out. And if he agrees, he has to murder his own
family. Most men would have fought. Most men
would have chosen honor and died protecting their
family. But Ieyasu chose the plan. To preserve
the house of Tokugawa, he ordered his wife to
be beheaded, and he ordered his son, his own
heir. to commit seppuku. I just cannot wrap my
head around the coldness, the sheer calculation
required to do that. It permanently proved his
loyalty to Nogunaga for sure, but it must have
just hollowed him out as a human being. It showed
that for Ieyasu, the long -term survival of the
lineage was more important than any individual
life. Even his own, even his son's. He just absorbed
that trauma and kept moving forward. And he had
to because the chaos just kept coming. Which
brings us to section four, the chaos of 1582.
The Hanaji Incident. The Red Wedding of Japanese
History. Nobunaga is at the absolute height of
his power, effectively ruling all of Japan. And
then, overnight, he is assassinated by his own
general, Akechi Mitsuhide. And where is Ieyasu
when all this goes down? He's not safe at home.
He's touring the Kansai region near Osaka with
just a small entourage. Suddenly, he is deep
in enemy territory. He is a sitting duck. Akechi
is hunting for all of Nobunaga's key allies.
But the bigger danger, really, is the Okimushigari.
The fallen warrior hunt. Exactly. Groups of peasants
and local bandits who would hunt down isolated
samurai to kill them for their armor, their swords,
their money, and their horses. So Iyasu has to
get back to his home province, Mikawa, but all
the main roads are blocked and crawling with
enemies. He has to go through the Iga Mountains.
The famous Iga Crossing. It's legendary. It was
this rugged, lawless region. He has to rely on
Hattori Hanzi again to negotiate safe passage
with the local ninja clans and the Jizamurai.
And this wasn't a casual stroll through the mountains.
Not at all. It was a desperate flight. Records
suggest they were constantly fighting skirmishes,
bribing bandits, literally running for their
lives. His escort was supposedly cut down from
200 men to just 34 by the time he got back. But
he makes it. He gets home. And this is the part
that just blows my mind. He's exhausted. He's
traumatized. His most powerful ally is dead.
You would think he would just lock the castle
gates and hide under a bed for a month. But he
does the opposite. He goes on the offensive.
This is what sets him apart from everyone else.
He immediately realizes that with Nobunaga dead
and the Takeda clan having been previously destroyed,
there is a massive power vacuum in the eastern
provinces of Kai and Shinano. While everyone
else is panicking or mourning. He launches the
Tenshu Jingo campaign. He grabs the land while
no one is looking. He turns a crisis into real
estate. He expands his power base significantly.
And that extra land, that extra power, gives
him the weight he needs for the next big phase.
The dance with Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Right. Section
five, Nobunaga is gone. Hideyoshi rises from
the ashes to take his place. And eventually these
two, the two biggest players left on the board,
they have to butt heads. This leads to the Battle
of Kamaki and Nagakute in 1584. This is a really
fascinating conflict because on the battlefield,
Ieyasu actually wins. His tactics are superior.
His generals, like the famously fierce Honda
Dadakatsu, completely outmaneuver Hideyoshi's
troops. So Hideyoshi realizes something important.
He realizes he can't crush Ieyasu militarily,
not without bleeding his own army dry and maybe
losing. But Hideyoshi has the resources. He controls
the rest of Japan. He can afford a stalemate.
Ieyasu can't. Exactly. So Ieyasu does the math.
He realizes that winning a few battles isn't
going to win him the war. So he submits. He swallows
his pride again and bows his head to Hideyoshi.
He accepts the role of a vassal to avoid the
complete destruction of his clan. And Hideyoshi,
being the shrewd operator he is, decides to handle
Ieyasu with a very specific, very clever strategy.
He gives him a gift. The transfer to the Kanto
region. It's one of the greatest political traps
in history. It really is. Yeah. In 1590, Hideyoshi
finally conquers the Huju clan in the east. He
turns to Ieyasu and says, look, I'll give you
all these new Huju lands, the entire Kanto region.
It's huge, much bigger than what you have now.
But in exchange, you have to give up your ancestral
home of Mikawa. It looks like a promotion, but
it's actually an exile. Precisely. Hideyoshi
is moving Ieyasu hundreds of miles away from
Kyoto, the center of politics. He's dumping him
in what was then a rustic, swampy backwater filled
with angry Hoshi loyalists who might rebel at
any moment. He thinks he's burying Ieyasu in
a sandbox so he can't cause trouble. And Ieyasu
just smiles, bows, and says thank you very much.
And he moves his headquarters to a small, insignificant
fishing village called Edo. Which, of course,
a few centuries later becomes Tokyo. Ieyasu saw
what Hideyoshi missed, didn't he? He absolutely
did. He saw that the Kanto Plain is the largest
single agricultural area in Japan. If you could
drain the swamps and control the floods, which
Ieyasu immediately started doing with massive
civil engineering projects, you could grow more
rice than anyone else. And in feudal Japan, rice
is money. Rice is money and rice is military
capacity. So while all the other lords are bickering
in Kyoto or bankrupting themselves fighting in
Hideyoshi's disastrous invasions of Korea, Ieyasu
is quietly off in the corner, building a nation
state. He literally won the empire by retreating.
He isolated himself to build strength. And then
he waited. He just waited for nature to take
its course. He waited for Hideyoshi to die. Which
he eventually does in 1598. And just like that,
the power vacuum is back. Hideyoshi leaves behind
a five -year -old son, Hideyori, and a council
of five powerful elders who are meant to protect
him. And Ieyasu is by far the most powerful man
on that council. Almost immediately, the country
splits into two factions. You have the Western
Army, led by the bureaucrat Hide Mitsunari, who
was fighting to protect the Toyotomi heir. And
on the other side? The Eastern Army, led by Tokugawa
Ieyasu. And this all leads us to Section 6, Sekigahara,
the decisive battle, October 21, 1600. It is
the largest samurai battle in Japanese history.
We're talking about maybe 75 ,000 men on Ieyasu's
side versus roughly 120 ,000 on the Western side.
And it happens on this foggy morning in a narrow
valley. On paper, Iyasu is seriously outnumbered.
He should lose. He should. But battles aren't
just fought with spears. They're fought with
letters. Iyasu had been very, very busy in the
months leading up to the fight. What was he doing?
He had been secretly communicating with several
of the daimyo in the Western Army, promising
them land, titles, and power if they switched
sides at the crucial moment. And the key figure
was a young, indecisive warlord named Kobayakawa
Hideaki. Kobayakawa was positioned on a hill
overlooking the entire battlefield. If he charged
down, he could smash Ieyasu's flank and end the
battle. Right. So the battle starts. People are
dying by the thousands. It's a bloody stalemate.
And Kobayakawa just sits there on his hill. He
freezes. He clearly freezes. He can't decide
which side to back. He's just watching the carnage,
paralyzed by indecision. So Ieyasu does something
that seems completely insane. He orders his musketeers
to fire on Kobayakawa. He fires on his own potential
ally. On the guy he's trying to woo over to his
side. It was a wake -up call, but with bullets.
The message was crystal clear. Make a choice
right now, or I will treat you as an enemy and
destroy you next. It panicked Kobayakawa. What
did he do? He immediately ordered his troops
to charge down the hill. Not Ieyasu, but at his
own allies in the Western Army. That betrayal
just broke the Western Army's morale. The lines
collapsed. Total chaos. Ieyasu won a complete
victory. In one afternoon, the civil wars that
had plagued Japan for a century were effectively
over. Ieyasu was the last man standing. But he's
not quite done yet. Section 7. Building the Shogunate.
In 1603, the emperor officially names him Shogun.
He finally has the title he's been working towards
his whole life. He establishes the Tokugawa Shogunate
in his new capital of Edo. But then, in a move
that confused everyone at the time, he resigns
just two years later in 1605. Why? Why work that
hard for the top job just to quit? He passed
the title to his son, Hidetada. And this was
a brilliant political maneuver. Hideyoshi's great
mistake was that he made his rule all about him.
By his personality, Ieyasu wanted to prove that
the shogunate was a system, that it was hereditary.
So by stepping down, he became the ogosho, the
retired shogun. He still held all the real power
from behind the scenes, but he freed himself
from all the tedious ceremonial busywork of the
court. He's still playing 40 chess, but there's
one last loose end. The Toyotomi heir, Hideyori.
He is still alive, and he's growing up in the
massive, impregnable Osaka Castle. And as long
as Hideyori lived, the Toyotomi name was a potential
rallying cry for anyone who was unhappy with
Tokugawa rule. Samurai who lost their lands at
Sekigahara, they all flocked to Osaka. It was
a ticking time bomb. So Ieyasu, now an old man,
decides he needs to pick a fight. And the pretext
he uses is almost laughable. The incident of
the temple bell. It's incredible. Hideyori rebuilt
a temple and had this massive bronze bell cast.
Ieyasu's scholars claimed the inscription on
the bell was a curse. A curse? How? They argue
that the characters for Ieyasu were broken up
by another character, which supposedly signified
a wish for his body to be shattered. It was completely
ridiculous. But it was the excuse he needed.
a casus belli. This leads to the siege of Osaka
in 1614, the Winter Siege. But Osaka Castle is
a beast. It's considered impregnable. Yasu can't
break in. So he switches from war to diplomacy.
He negotiates a truce. He tells Hideyori's mother,
let's have peace. This fighting is pointless.
And as part of the peace deal, he says the Tokugawa
troops will help fill in the outer moats of the
castle, just as a sign of good faith, you know,
to demilitarize the zone. Fill in the moats.
It sounds like a reasonable landscaping project.
But Ieyasu's men didn't stop at the outer moats.
They kept working. They filled the inner moats.
They tore down the ramparts. They worked day
and night. By the time the Toyotomi realized
what was happening, the strongest castle in Japan
had been turned into a defenseless house on a
hill. That is the ultimate dirty trick. But it
worked. When hostilities inevitably resumed the
next summer, the summer siege, the castle fell
easily. Hideyori committed seppuku. The Toyotomi
line was extinguished. The last threat was finally
gone. Ieyasu was 73 years old. He had finally
eaten the whole rice cake. The board was clear.
Let's move to Section 8. What did he actually
do with this total, absolute power? He built
a prison. A very comfortable, very stable, very
peaceful prison. He looked at why Nobunaga and
Hideyoshi ultimately failed. Their systems were
too volatile, too dependent on one man. Ieyasu
locked everything down. He reorganized all the
daimyo, right? The feudal lords? Yes. He created
a class system based on loyalty. The Fudai were
the lords who had supported him before Sekigahara.
They got all the strategic lands and the important
positions in government. And the ones who joined
him later? The Tuzama, the outsider lords. They
were pushed to the edges of the map. They were
kept rich enough to be quiet, but they were placed
so far away that they could never threaten Ito.
And his successors later instituted the Senken
Kotai system, forcing them to spend every other
year in Edo, basically draining their money on
travel so they couldn't afford to build armies.
Exactly. And he also locked down foreign policy.
This brings us back to Shugun and the character
of Blackthorn. The real man was William Adams,
an English pilot who washed ashore in Japan.
And Ieyasu actually liked him, didn't he? He
was fascinated by him. Adams became a close advisor
on things like shipbuilding and geometry. But
more importantly, Adams explained to him that
the Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal, had
colonial ambitions. He explained that where the
missionaries went, the armies often followed.
And this just confirmed Iassu's suspicions. He
saw Christianity as a political threat, a loyalty
to a foreign pope over a loyalty to the shogun.
So he pivoted. He favored trade with the Dutch
and the English, who he saw as just wanting to
trade, not conquer. And eventually, in 1614,
he banned Christianity entirely and expelled
the missionaries. This began the policy of isolation
sukoku that would seal Japan off from the outside
world for centuries. What about the man himself?
We know the strategist, but what was he like
to, you know, hang out with? He was eccentric.
He was a total health nut, actually. He mixed
his own herbal medicines and usually refused
to take what the professional doctors gave him.
He was known to swim in the castle moats for
exercise well into his old age. And what about
the falconry? He was obsessed with falconry,
but he didn't just see it as a sport. For him,
it was military training. Walking through rough
terrain, organizing the hunting party, managing
the birds, it kept his body and his mind sharp.
He truly believed that a ruler had to be physically
robust to rule effectively. He was obsessed with
longevity, which makes perfect sense. His greatest
weapon was simply outliving all of his enemies.
He knew. He knew that if he just stayed alive,
the impulsiveness and ambition of others would
eventually destroy them. But eventually, something
got him. Yeah, in 1616, he died at age 73. There's
a popular legend that he died from eating too
much tempura. Death by tempura. Really? He supposedly
ate a large meal of sea bream tempura and got
a fatal stomach ache. In reality, it was almost
certainly stomach cancer or something similar.
But he died knowing his work was done. He was
deified after his death as Tush Daigomen, the
great gongan, light of the east. He literally
became a god meant to protect the nation he had
built. So when we zoom out and we look at the
three unifiers together, the contrast is just
so stark. Nobunaga was the destroyer. He broke
the old medieval system. Hiyoshi was the conqueror.
He forged a new shape for the country with his
charisma and ambition. But Iyasu, he was the
architect, the builder. Nobunaga had genius,
but he was reckless and impulsive. Hiyoshi had
charisma, but he overreached. Iyasu had the temperament
to make it last. He created a system that, for
better or worse, kept the peace for two and a
half centuries. You know, it brings me back to
that idea of him as the cunning old badger. People
often paint his patience as cynical or manipulative,
but I wonder, was it actually a form of supreme
optimism? That's a really fascinating angle.
What do you mean? I mean, to wait that long,
to endure being a hostage, to kill your own son,
to bow to your enemies time and time again, you
have to believe deep down that eventually you
will win. You have to believe that survival itself
is worth any price. He proves that the person
who crosses the finish line first isn't always
the winner. Sometimes the real winner is the
person who makes sure there's still a track left
to run on for everyone else. He built a shelter
that the Japanese people lived in for 250 years.
So for everyone listening, here's the question.
In your own life... In your own struggles, are
you pounding the rice cake? Are you frantically
kneading it? Or do you have the discipline to
sit down, light the torches, play the drum, and
just wait to eat it? Sometimes the smartest move
really is to just wait. Thanks for listening
to this deep dive into the life of the ultimate
survivor, Tokugawa Ieyasu. We'll see you next
time.