“Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Tokugawa were watching a cuckoo bird, waiting for it to sing, but the bird wouldn’t sing.
Nobunaga says “Little bird, if you don’t sing I will kill you”.
Hideyoshi says “Little bird, if you don’t sing, I’ll make you sing”.
Then Tokugawa Ieyasu says to the bird “Little bird, if you don’t sing, I will wait for you to sing.”
On the morning of 21 October 1600, the Eastern and Western armies of Japan stood across from one another on the Sekigahara plain, 50 miles from Kyoto. Led by Tokugawa Ieyasu in the east and Ishida Mitsunari in the west, the battle would prove decisive in ending the Sengoku period of Japanese history. Since 1467 – the Sengoku Jidai (“Warring States Period”) – Japan had been embroiled in relentless civil war as dozens of powerful clan chiefs, or daimyō, fought to increase their territory and influence in the feudal state. Nominally led by an Emperor in Kyoto, Japan’s rule had long been delegated to a military governor, or shogun, who was the state’s strongest daimyō. However, having ruled since 1338 the Ashikaga dynasty had weakened, unable to support its own shoguns due to insufficient territorial capacity. Thus the Ashikaga clan was forced to allow more and more responsibility to fall into the hands of local daimyō, who smelt blood. The 50 years before Sekigahara had seen the most brutal fighting in Japanese history as chronic clan disobedience broke out into open war and Japan’s daimyō fought for the rights to call their clan the next shogunate.
Born in 1543, Tokugawa Ieyasu, daimyō of the Tokugawa clan, was by 1600 the most powerful man in Japan and led an experienced and united army onto the battlefield. Having previously been a vassal of central Japan’s Imagawa clan, at age 18 he abandoned his clan’s masters in favour of one of the Sengoku period’s rising stars. This man was Oda Nobunaga, leader of the powerful Oda clan who lay on Ieyasu’s northern border. Despite previous conflict against one another as the Oda sought to reverse Imagawa influence, the two would form a famous alliance and Ieyasu’s military successes against his former master, Imagawa Yoshimoto, made him one of the Oda daimyo’s most trusted subordinates.
After expelling Ashikaga Yoshiaki, the dynasty’s last shogun, in 1573 and destroying the remnants of the once-proud Takeda clan at the Battle of Tenmokuzan, Nobunaga was within reach of Japan’s most coveted position. However, in 1582, while preparing for an invasion of southwestern Japan, Nobunaga attended a tea ceremony at the Honno-Ji temple in Kyoto. While there, the Akachi clan, an Oda ally, encircled Honno-Ji with its army and attacked. With just a handful of retainers to protect him, resistance was short-lived and Nobunaga, alongside his son and heir, Nobutada, was forced into one of the temple’s central rooms where they committed seppuku, traditional suicide by self-disembowelment.
The death of Oda Nobunaga undoubtedly changed the course of Japanese history as his dream of forming a shogunate was close to fruition. In the days after his assassination the Akachi clan was destroyed and Nobunaga’s generals were scattered to fight for his territory. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Nobunaga’s most powerful general, was soon the clear front-runner; he opted to support the former Oda daimyō’s grandson in 1584 to reclaim Nobunaga’s lands. However, as the boy was just 4 years old at the time, Hideyoshi was the decision-maker.
Meanwhile, Ieyasu threw in his lot with Oda Nobukatsu, Nobunaga’s eldest surviving son. In the year 1584, Ieyasu and Hideyoshi fought over the Oda province of Owari in two inconclusive campaigns. At the end of the year, Nobukatsu made peace with the Toyotomi daimyō and Ieyasu followed suit, being granted retention of the Tokugawa clan’s five provinces. In the summer of 1590, the two fought alongside one another to defeat the last opposition to Hideyoshi’s rule, the Hōjō clan of Sagami province, east of Tokugawa lands. After a successful campaign and the death of Hōjō Ujimasa, the clan’s daimyō, Ieyasu was rewarded with the eight provinces the Hōjō controlled. In 1591 Ieyasu moved his armies and retainers to the new territory, giving up the Tokugawa’s prior lands. He personally sited his headquarters in Edo castle.
Prevented from claiming the title of shogun due to his birth as a peasant, Hideyoshi ruled Japan as Kampaku (“Imperial Regent”) until his death in 1598. Shortly before passing he appointed a ‘Council of Five Elders’ composed of powerful daimyō to rule as regents until his five-year-old son, Hideyori, came of age. Tokugawa Ieyasu sat on this council as arguably its most powerful member.
Finally, the time was right for Ieyasu to make his bid for the shogunate. In 1600, following the death of Maida Toshiie (a council elder), Ieyasu seized the moment and marshalled his troops against his remaining three colleagues. The Tokugawa seized control of Ōsaka Castle and seized the infant Hideyori as a hostage. When Uesugi Kagekatsu, another regent, started constructing a fort on the Tokugawa border, Ieyasu took offense and marched to punish the Uesugi in July. The remaining regents rallied their armies to the command of Ishida Mitsunari, who led what is known as the ‘Western Army’ against Ieyasu’s combined Eastern troops. Though not included in Hideyoshi’s ‘Council of Five Elders’, Mitsunari was experienced as a leader and adept on the battlefield by 1600.
The Western forces seized Fushimi castle in early September, but in doing so they lost 3,000 men and ten valuable days. On 7 October, in eastern Japan, Ieyasu’s troops were marching west to face Mitsunari’s advance. Mitsunari selected the Sekigahara plain to make his stand against the determined Tokugawa daimyō. The web of streams running across the eastern plain would prevent a major coordinated attack against Mitsunari’s centre while the village of Sekigahara provided the axis for his lines. Defensive hills to the rear also gave the Western forces a strong reserve position to deploy reserves and a defensive area to fall back on should Ieyasu’s men prove too strong to face on the open field. It was here that the two sides arrived on the night of 20 October.
The sky cleared on the morning of 21 October after a night of skirmishing in the heavy fog. Each army fielded around 80,000 men and Sekigahara was shaping up to be an evenly matched contest. However, in the months leading up to the battle, Ieyasu had been in contact with many of the Western Army’s daimyō. He promised leniency and rewards if they were to defect and he be raised to shogun.
The battle began with a charge against Mitsunari’s centre from the Eastern Army’s left flank. Initially successful, Ieyasu’s men forced the enemy back but were ultimately unable to break through. The major offensive comprised some 20,000 men of the Eastern right flank in an advance against Mitsunari’s left. Under extreme pressure the Western line buckled but Ieyasu’s men were again checked by cavalry defending the outer flank. The attack on Mitsunari’s left nearly succeeded in killing the Western general himself but a hastily assembled defensive ring averted disaster. Ieyasu committed further infantry and cavalry to the developing melee as well as arquebusiers units; the arquebus was an early European matchlock gun which the Tokugawa clan was among the first to widely adopt. But Mitsunari drew from his reserves to face the incoming threat.
As further Tokugawa infantry were deployed to overwhelm Mitsunari’s centre, weakened by the onslaught of Eastern reinforcements, Mitsunari ordered the Shimazu clan to move forward and shore up the line. They refused to do so. There are a range of theories as to why: Mitsunari’s aide is said to have inadvertently insulted the clan when delivering the order; a lack of respect for Mitsunari from the daimyō, Shimazu Yoshihiro, (who would only take orders from respected generals) or simple cowardice (though this is unlikely). Whatever the case, the Shimazu would not fight, a highly concerning outcome for Mitsunari. He then called on Kobayakawa Hideaki’s 16,000 men on the relatively quiet right flank to move across and counterattack in the centre. Mitsunari’s request was met with disaster as the young Hideaki had been in contact with Ieyasu in the weeks beforehand and promised to defect. He was still non-committal to either side but when Ieyasu’s men were ordered to fire blanks at the Kobayakawa force to force a decision, Hideaki marched off his position and charged into Mitsunari’s exposed centre.
The battle was over as Eastern forces encircled Mitsunari’s left flank and slaughtered them. Remaining troops positioned on the far right against Ieyasu’s reserves defected or fled the field and victory was decisive.
There were over 35,000 Western casualties and over 20,000 defectors. Eastern losses were just 5,000 and many of the daimyō opposing Ieyasu were killed in battle, executed or forced to commit seppuku. Mitsunari himself was publicly beheaded in November.
Three years later, the Emperor declared Tokugawa Ieyasu the first shogun in 27 years since Oda Nobunaga drove out the last of the Ashikaga dynasty. The Tokugawa would rule for the next 264 years until 1867 when the Imperial family reclaimed control of Japan during the Meiji restoration.
Ieyasu retired from his position in 1605 citing age, leaving his son, Hidetada, in control. However he continued in the shadows until his death in 1616 at the age of 73. Sekigahara was a defining moment in Japanese history as the legacy of Japan’s ‘Three Great Unifiers’, Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, was complete. Though the first two never got to see it happen, the latter finally ended the bloodshed of the Sengoku period and started Japan’s final dynasty on the battlefield of Sekigahara.
Tokugawa Ieyasu’s unparalleled patience allowed his clan to rise from a weak vassal of the Imagawa, caught in conflict between the titans of Oda Nobunaga and Imagawa Yoshimoto, leaving him as the last great daimyō standing when the dust settled over Japan.
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Bryant, A.J. (2009) Sekigahara 1600: The final struggle for power. Oxford: Osprey.
Sadler, A.L. and Turnbull, S. (2014) Shogun: The life of tokugawa ieyasu. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing.
Dening, W. (1955) The life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi = Toyotomi Hideyoshi den. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press.