Founder of the Edo shogunate, the patient man who ended the age of war
The final victor of Japan’s Warring States era and founder of the Edo shogunate. After Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi had each contended for supremacy, he bided his time for decades with extraordinary patience and endurance, finally winning a decisive victory at Sekigahara, and in 1603 was made shogun, founding the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan for over 260 years. He designed an intricate system of feudal control (such as sankin-kōtai, which had the regional lords travel regularly to and from Edo, exhausting them while their families were kept as hostages), buying more than two centuries of rare peace. He represents a wisdom of power different from Caesar or Qin Shi Huang: not the sharpest, but the one most able to wait, laughed last.
A famous Japanese comparison: about a cuckoo that will not sing, Nobunaga says "kill it," Hideyoshi says "make it want to sing," and Ieyasu says "wait for it to sing." Nobunaga and Hideyoshi both reached the summit before Ieyasu, yet died early or left their work unsecured; only Ieyasu, most able to endure and wait, outlasted every rival, laughed last, and founded two centuries of peace.
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