IEYASU

For four hundred years, Tokugawa Ieyasu has been remembered as the patient one — the tortoise who won by waiting, the careful old man who outlasted flashier rivals and let victory fall into his lap. This book tells a different, truer story.

At five years old, Ieyasu was sent away as a hostage and stolen on the road by his family's enemies. He grew up as another family's property. As a young general he made a reckless mistake that nearly got him killed. He let his own wife and eldest son die to keep an alliance alive. When his great ally was murdered, he escaped through the mountains with thirty men — and within months had seized new provinces. He beat the most powerful man in Japan in battle, then chose to kneel to him. He won the greatest battle in Japanese history with letters before a single arrow flew. And in his seventies, he used a few words on a temple bell as an excuse to destroy the last family that stood in his way.

Then he built a system of rules so carefully designed that it kept Japan at peace for 265 years.

Told as a narrative history from beginning to end, with a cast of characters, a map, and a travel guide to the places you can still visit today, this book follows Ieyasu from a frightened boy in a small castle to a god worshipped at Nikkō. It says plainly what the records show, what historians still debate, and which famous stories are only legends.

Inside, you'll find:

- The boy who was traded like a coin, and what twelve years as a hostage taught him
- The defeat at Mikatagahara, and the famous "portrait of fear" that may not be what it seems
- The wife and son who died to save an alliance, and the questions historians still ask
- The desperate escape through the mountains of Iga after Nobunaga's murder
- The letters that decided Sekigahara before the fighting began
- The temple bell that became an excuse for war, and the fall of Osaka Castle
- How a hostage became a god, and built a peace that lasted two and a half centuries
- A guide to visiting the places in this story today, from his birthplace at Okazaki Castle to his shrine at Nikkō

If you want the gentle tortoise of the old rhyme, this is not your book. If you want the real story of how a hostage became the master of Japan, turn the page and meet the real Ieyasu.