Japanese Military Leader

Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543-1616) was a Japanese military leader who reunified Japan at the beginning of the 17th century after a long period of civil war, known as the Warring States or Sengoku period. He created a new government controlled by the Tokugawa family that ruled Japan until 1868.

Rise to Power
Ieyasu, whose real name was Matsudaira Takechiyo, was born in 1543 in Okazaki Castle near the modern city of Nagoya. The Matsudaira were a warrior family that claimed ancestry back to the Minamoto clan that had ruled Japan in the Kamakura period (1185-1333). 

The 16th century is referred to as the Warring States or Sengoku period, as it was a time of civil war in which local warrior leaders called daimyo competed for power and control of land. Treachery was common not only between families but even within them. 

To cement alliances, families would often swap hostages, and for that reason, Ieyasu spent many years away from his family as a child.

Following his first battle in 1558, he gradually strengthened his family's position through an alliance with Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582), a powerful warrior who was taking the first steps to reunify Japan.

Ieyasu engaged in a long series of campaigns against the rival Takeda family, and this led to their eventual defeat in 1582. In the same year, Oda Nobunaga was murdered by one of his own retainers and, in the confusion that followed, Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) emerged as the strongest military leader in Japan. 

Although initially hostile to Hideyoshi, in 1590, Ieyasu formed an alliance with him in order to attack the Hojo family, a powerful clan that controlled a lot of land in the Kanto area in eastern Japan.  READ MORE...