The Rise of the Shogun: How Japan Found Peace

Japan is, perhaps more than any other country, strange to the west. There are many far off lands and many exotic cultures, but that of the Japanese, even today, stands apart.

There are good reasons for this, to be sure. For 250 years Japan chose to isolate herself from the rest of the world. Under the Sakoku Edict she followed her own path, free from intermingling and from outside influence of almost any kind.

Such a choice has far-reaching consequences, creating a land which developed along its own path and which remained this way until, overtaken as much by global events as by choice, this ended in the latter half of the 19th century. Even now, 150 years later, her period of isolation casts a long shadow.

So much for the end of her isolation. But what of its beginning? The story of the Sakoku Edict itself is, perhaps, not the key part of the story. Issued in 1635, it betrayed a Japanese ruler distrustful of foreign influence. This is not his story.

The choice, and the ruler, came about through the desire of another man: for power, for peace, and for unity. This man was not a king, nor an Emperor. He was Tokugawa Ieyasu, and his title was Shogun.

Western fascination with Japan has led to many loan words being abused and misused, dropped into new cultural contexts with their original meaning muddied by the imperfect translation. Ninja, samurai, shinobi, all have been borrowed and misapplied, and so it is with Shogun.

A Shogun is not simply a warlord, or a military leader, as most translators would have it. On the simplest level it means “army commander” but this conveys only the smallest part of what it actually entails. Originally it was “sei-i taishōgun”, or “Chief Commander of the Army Raised to Conquer the Barbarians” but this, too, is not what the role became.

A Shogun is not the Emperor, nor a regent as a result of this title, although ultimately it amounts to the same thing. He is a figure of power, backed by the army and a representation of order and enforced peace when it is most needed. He serves the Emperor, or the Emperor’s regents, but for vast stretches of Japanese history he was the ruler.

The first Shogun appeared in the 9th century, and again in the 12th and 14th, always during periods of crisis and infighting and always awarded to the conquering victor. But with Ieyasu’s Shogunate, the title reached entered its greatest, most enduring, and final form.

Peace Through Conquest

This story starts with one man, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Although not born a noble, Hideyoshi rose to become a feudal lord, a warrior, and eventually Imperial Regent of Japan. He is considered one of the Great Unifiers of the Japanese people, and yet he was not made a Shogun.

There is some dispute as to why he was not awarded this rank despite his unchallenged position as the ruler of a unified Japan. Some believe that his lowly birth prevented it, and others go so far as to assert that Shogun could only come from one clan, the ancient and revered Minamoto.

Hideyoshi may not have had the title then, but he had the power. However it was his fate to fail in his last great military expedition, against the Korean peninsula, and to die leaving a child, his nephew Hidetsugu, as his heir. Hideyoshi created a council, the Council of Five Elders, to rule until Hidetsugu came of age. One of these five men was Tokugawa Ieyasu.

Ieyasu was by this time in his late fifties, a seasoned warrior and political intriguer. He was also a ruthless man, well aware of how dangerous a world feudal Japan could be. He had proven himself a staunch ally of Hideyoshi, but he had ambitions of his own.

And, as is almost always the case in such circumstances, it would not take long after Hideyoshi’s death for the members of the council to start jockeying for position and advantage. And history records that it was the ambitious Ieyasu who made the first move.

Any overt attempt by a council member to advance their position directly would be extremely risky, and such a rash move could see the one who stepped out of line facing a united front of all the others. There were other ways to seek advantage however, and Ieyasu at first chose a more indirect path to power.

He began by seeking out advantageous marriages for his sons, gaining powerful allies and growing his family’s wealth, land, and military might. Hideyoshi had sought to prevent such dynastic overreach, as the other members of the council loudly protested, but Tokugawa was a seasoned political intriguer and was careful to avoid too large a provocation.

There were other clashes involving Ieyasu. Shortly after Hideyoshi’s death he supported a cadre of generals against a rival member of the council, Ishida Mitsunari, forcing the latter to resign as regent. Then he sought alliances with disaffected members of rival clans, strengthening his military position further.

He eventually grew to be such a threat that an attempt was made on his life. The attempt came at Fushimi castle on September 12, 1599, and involved both Hideyoshi’s own vassals and another member of the council.

Ieyasu’s first instinct was to kill all the conspirators, but in the end he used their treachery for his own advantage, currying favor through forgiveness with those he felt could offer him an edge. If he were to realize his ambitions, he saw a war coming.

It would be Ishida Mitsunari who emerged as Ieyasu’s chief rival. He was a powerful man in command of fully half of Japan’s forces, as well as the child heir, but it seems that Ieyasu had the measure of him from the start. Mitsunari, afraid of Ieyasu’s power, hatched a plot to kill him.

When word of this reached Ieyasu’s vassals, they attacked Mitsunari and would have killed him, but for his being saved by Ieyasu himself. Perhaps Ieyasu realized that an army commanded by Mitsunari was an army that he could defeat.

And so it came to be. Ishida Mitsunari and Tokugawa Ieyasu faced off in the largest battle in Japanese history: the Battle of Sekigahara. Tokugawa, outnumbered but aided by foreign firearms, won the day and followed up his victory with a series of stunning strikes against Mitsunari’s strongholds.

The campaign which followed lasted three years, but on March 24 1603 he emerged as the victor, declared Shogun by the figurehead Emperor. He was 60 years old, but he had achieved his ambition. He had outfought and outlived all his rivals. And he had, finally and brutally, achieved peace.

Top Image: Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the last Shogunate of Japan (Utagawa Yoshitora / Public Domain)