It all worked brilliantly. He pacified and controlled and reformed and improved his new lands. Within a few years, Ieyasu became the second most powerful daimyô in Japan. And because Kantō was somewhat isolated, he was able to maintain a measure of autonomy from the most powerful one, and inspire a proverb. Ieyasu won the Empire by retreating.
In 1598, with his health failing, Hideyoshi called a meeting to create the Council of Five Elders, responsible for ruling on behalf of his son after his death. Ieyasu was the most powerful of the five. Two of the others, Uesugi Kagekatsu and Mōri Terumoto, would ultimately form an alliance with Ishida Mitsunari, the commander of the Western Army that would fight Ieyasu’s Eastern Army at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.
The winner writes the narrative. Four years after the battle, Tokugawa’s historian, Hayashi Gahō, summarized the consequences. Evil-doers and bandits were vanquished and the entire realm submitted to Lord Ieyasu, praising the establishment of peace and extolling his martial virtue. That this glorious era that he founded may continue for ten thousands upon ten thousands of generations, coeval with heaven and earth.
Ieyasu quickly seized power, redistributing the lands and fiefs of the participants, rewarding those who assisted him, and displacing, punishing, or exiling those who fought against him. He ordered the public execution of Ishida Mitsunari and other Toyotomi loyalists, and gained the control and wealth of their territories. Nobunaga pounds the national rice cake, Hideyoshi kneads it, and in the end Ieyasu sits down and eats it. One of Ieyasu’s Christian daimyô, Kuroda Nagamasa, would write of the ideal balance between the arts of peace and war.
‘If a general who is to maintain the province does not have a special consciousness, his task will be a difficult one to attain. His attitudes must not be the same as the ordinary man's. Firstly, he must be correct in manners and etiquette, must not let self-interest into government, and must take care of the common people... he should not forget even for a moment that he is the model for the four classes of people. Generally speaking, the master of a province should discharge his duties with love and humanity, should not listen to slander, and should exercise the good. His governing should be as clear as the bright sun in the bright sky, and he should think things over deeply in his mind and make no mistakes. The arts of peace and the arts of war are like the two wheels of a cart which, lacking one, will have difficulty in standing ... When one has been born into the house of a military commander, he should not forget the arts of war even for a moment ... it is essential that he know the Way of Truth, that he be particular about his efforts in the scrutinizing of every matter, that he be just in all affairs and make no mistakes, that he be correct in recognizing good and evil and demonstrate rewards and punishments clearly, and that he have a deep sympathy for all people. Again, what is called cherishing the Way of the Warrior is not a matter of extolling the martial arts above all things and becoming a scaremonger. It is rather in being well-informed in military strategy, in forever pondering one's resources of pacifying disturbances, in training one's soldiers without remiss, in rewarding those who have done meritorious deeds and punishing those who have committed crimes, in being correct in one's evaluation of bravery and cowardice, and in not forgetting this matter of "the battle" even when the world is at peace. It is simply brashness to make a specialty of the martial arts and to be absorbed in one's individual efforts. Such is certainly not the Way of the Warrior of a provincial lord or military commander.’
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