Tokugawa Ieyasu

Former hostage turned daimyo who founded the Tokugawa shogunate and ruled Japan from Edo.

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Tokugawa Ieyasu was a Japanese samurai and daimyo who established the Tokugawa shogunate and served as its first shogun. That government held power from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He is counted as the last of the three Great Unifiers of Japan, following his one-time lord Oda Nobunaga and his fellow Oda retainer Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Born the son of a minor lord in Mikawa Province, he spent much of his childhood as a hostage, yet he outlasted every rival, took control of the country after the Battle of Sekigahara, and built a system of rule that kept the daimyo at peace for generations.

Quick Facts

Nickname: "Tosho Dai-Gongen"
Office: Shōgun
Took office: March 24, 1603
Left office: April 16, 1605
Monarch: Go-Yōzei
Predecessor: Ashikaga Yoshiaki
Successor: Tokugawa Hidetada

Facts from the source article.

Background

He was born Matsudaira Takechiyo at Okazaki Castle on January 31, 1543. His father, Matsudaira Hirotada, held a small territory squeezed between the Imagawa clan to the east and the Oda clan to the west. To secure an alliance with Imagawa Yoshimoto, the boy was to be sent to Sunpu, but Oda Nobuhide seized him first and kept him at the Honshōji Temple in Nagoya. In 1551 he was handed over to the Imagawa and lived at Sunpu, coming of age there in 1556 and marrying Lady Tsukiyama. His first battle came in 1558 at Terabe. When Yoshimoto was killed at the Battle of Okehazama in 1560, the young lord, then called Motoyasu, reclaimed Okazaki Castle and quietly switched sides to ally with Oda Nobunaga.