The New International Encyclopædia/Iyeyasŭ Tokugawa

​Iyeyasŭ (or Ieyasŭ) Tokugawa, ē̇-yā′yȧ-s’ tō′ko̅o̅-gä′wȧ (1542–1616). A famous Japanese general and statesman, the first Shogun of the Tokugawa line, and the founder of the peace and order under which the Japanese lived from the year 1604 to 1868. Though a descendant of the famous Minamoto clan, his father was a humble peasant. He served with distinction under both Nobunaga and Hideyoshi (qq.v.). On the death of Hideyoshi, in 1598, great dissensions arose among the territorial barons or daimios in regard to his successor. Many, including Iyeyasu, had sworn to protect Hideyoshi’s son Hideyori, then a child of six, and to secure his succession; but many more opposed his claim as the son of a person of low birth, and sided with Iyeyasu when a movement against him compelled him to take up arms. In a bloody battle at Sekigahara, on October 16, 1600, Iyeyasu utterly routed his enemies, killing 10,000 of them. Wholesale confiscations followed, and with these lands he rewarded his adherents in such a way as to secure his own authority throughout the country. Later he captured the castle at Osaka, where the child Hideyori was with his mother, and in 1603 reported to the Mikado, receiving from him the appointment of head of the Minamoto clan, and that of Sei-i-tai Shogun, or ‘Barbarian-quelling-great-general.’ Not long after he received the submission and homage of the barons at Yedo, which he made his capital. The better to maintain his authority, ​he ordained that each of the daimios should, with a certain number of his armed retainers, remain in Yedo six months of the year, and their wives and families should be left as hostages when they visited their own domains. He then began extensive internal improvements; he enlarged the castle at Yedo, made streets and canals, built bridges, erected buildings, drained marshes, constructed the great highway called Tokaido, which runs along the eastern coast from Yedo to Kioto, and effected many other great and lasting improvements for the betterment of the country. In 1605 he concluded peace with Korea, reëstablished friendly relations with China, and retired in favor of his son Hidetada, reserving to himself, however, a large measure of control. He then took up his abode in his castle at Sumpu (now Shidzuoka), in the Province of Suruga, occupying himself with the collection of books and manuscripts, and the composition (as is believed) of the document, in one hundred sections, known as The Legacy (or Testament) of Iyeyasu, containing laws or rules to be observed in governing the country. His policy, which aimed at the unification of the country, included as one of its features the exclusion of aliens and the alien religion, Christianity. In 1614 he issued a proclamation ordering all Romish propagandists and leaders of churches to be deported, their churches to be destroyed, and compulsory recantation of the faith by the converts. Large numbers were deported, and thousands were massacred in the persecutions that followed. The Portuguese and Spanish were expelled, but the Dutch and English, who first arrived in Japan during this period, received commercial privileges, the former being allowed to settle at Nagasaki, and the latter at Hirado.

Iyeyasu died at Sumpu, and was buried at Kunosan in Surage, but later his remains were interred in a mausoleum at Nikko. He was canonized as To Sho Dai-Gongen, but is commonly spoken of as Gongen Sama. His festival falls on the 17th day of the fourth month. Consult: Rein, Japan (London, 1884); Lowder, The Legacy of Iyeyasu (Yokohama, 1874); and Grigsby, in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. viii. (Tokio, 1875).