Tokugawa Ieyasu spent his childhood as a hostage passed between rival clans
At five, the boy who would found the Tokugawa shogunate was kidnapped by the Oda clan while being sent as a hostage to their rivals. His father refused to break his alliance even under threat to his son. Tokugawa Ieyasu survived years of captivity, and his dynasty ruled from 1603 until 1868.
He was born Matsudaira Takechiyo at Okazaki Castle on January 31, 1543, son of Matsudaira Hirotada, a minor warlord of Mikawa Province, and Lady Odai; his parents were step-siblings aged 17 and 15. That same year the clan split, and when Odai's family sided with the Oda, Hirotada divorced her. Squeezed between the Imagawa to the east and the Oda to the west, Hirotada sought Imagawa help, which came at the price of sending his heir as a hostage.
Oda Nobuhide intercepted the boy and held him for three years at Honshōji Temple in Nagoya, threatening his life, yet did not harm him even when Hirotada stood firm. In 1549 Hirotada died, possibly of illness rather than the assassination long rumoured. Two years later, in a deal struck by Oda Nobunaga to save his half-brother from an Imagawa siege, the nine-year-old was handed over to the Imagawa at Sunpu, where he was treated fairly well.
He came of age in 1556 under Imagawa Yoshimoto, married Lady Tsukiyama, and fought his first battle in 1558 at Terabe, where he burned the main castle and beat off an expected Oda attack on his rear. The next year he got supplies into besieged Odaka Castle by launching diversionary attacks on two nearby forts. Later he became ally and general of Oda Nobunaga, briefly rivalled Toyotomi Hideyoshi, then served him, and was moved to the Kanto, where he built his castle at the fishing village of Edo, now Tokyo.
He husbanded his forces during Hideyoshi's failed invasions of Korea, and after Hideyoshi's death and the Battle of Sekigahara he seized power in 1600. Appointed shogun in 1603, he stepped down in 1605 while keeping real control. His bakuhan system of finely graded rewards and punishments kept daimyo and samurai at peace. He died on June 1, 1616.
Source: Tokugawa Ieyasu
