Ieyasu's early life reads like a catalog of abandonment. At age two, his mother was permanently separated from his father's household due to shifting clan alliances. At four, his father sent him as a hostage to the powerful Imagawa clan at Sumpu -- modern-day Shizuoka city. En route, he was intercepted and seized by the rival Oda clan, spending two years in their custody before being released back to the Imagawa. His father, Matsudaira Hirotada, was murdered by a close vassal in 1549. The boy grew up in the household of his family's overlords, receiving military training and developing a lifelong passion for falconry. He would not return to his ancestral domain at Okazaki until 1560, when the Imagawa lord Yoshimoto was killed at the Battle of Okehazama by Oda Nobunaga.

Free from Imagawa control, Ieyasu made a decision that would define the next two decades: he allied with Oda Nobunaga. It was a partnership of unequals -- Nobunaga was the dominant force, the revolutionary who smashed tradition and terrified rivals -- but Ieyasu proved himself a reliable and capable ally. He renamed his clan from Matsudaira to Tokugawa in 1566, establishing a new identity. He moved his headquarters from Okazaki to Hamamatsu in 1570, positioning himself closer to the strategic Tokaido corridor. When Nobunaga was assassinated in 1582 and Toyotomi Hideyoshi emerged as Japan's new strongman, Ieyasu adapted again. After initial skirmishes, he offered fealty to Hideyoshi while quietly building the largest, most reliable army and the most productive domain in Japan.

In 1590, Hideyoshi ordered Ieyasu to relocate to the Kanto plain, far from the centers of power in Kyoto and Osaka. It was meant as a form of exile. Ieyasu turned it into an advantage. He established his headquarters at Edo -- a small fishing village that he transformed into the foundation of what would become Tokyo. By the time Hideyoshi died in 1598, Ieyasu controlled the most productive territory in Japan and commanded its strongest army. The decisive moment came at the Battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600, roughly 50 miles northeast of Kyoto, where Ieyasu's eastern coalition crushed the western armies loyal to Hideyoshi's young heir. In 1603, the emperor formally appointed Ieyasu as shogun, establishing the Tokugawa shogunate.

Ieyasu's relationship with the Shizuoka region runs deeper than any other place in Japan. He spent his hostage years at Sumpu as a child. He governed Totomi Province from Hamamatsu during his years of alliance with Nobunaga. And after formally passing the title of shogun to his son Hidetada in 1605, Ieyasu retired to Sumpu Castle in Shizuoka, where he continued to wield enormous power as the retired shogun. He died at Sumpu on June 1, 1616, at the age of 73. His remains were first interred at Kunozan Toshogu shrine on the Shizuoka coast, before being relocated to the elaborate Nikko Toshogu shrine in the mountains north of Edo. The coordinates of this article place us in the hills near Kakegawa, in the heart of the old Totomi Province that Ieyasu fought so tenaciously to control.

The shogunate Ieyasu founded would govern Japan for over 260 years, from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Under Tokugawa rule, Japan entered an era of internal stability, economic growth, and relative isolation from the outside world. Edo grew from that small fishing village into one of the largest cities on Earth. The warrior class was gradually transformed into a bureaucratic aristocracy. Art, theater, and literature flourished. In modern popular culture, Ieyasu's story has been retold endlessly -- most famously as the inspiration for Lord Toranaga in James Clavell's novel Shogun, adapted as a television series in 1980 starring Toshiro Mifune and again in 2024 starring Hiroyuki Sanada. The patient warlord who waited for the cuckoo to sing remains one of history's most compelling studies in strategic restraint.