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Some substantial work was done, yet the place did not suggest any fitness for the purpose of an administrative centre, and not until the battle of Sekigahara placed him in command of immense resources, did Ieyasu decide to make Yedo his capital. He then had large recourse to labour requisitioned from the feudatories.
He seems to have conceived a hope that his generals would find goals for their ambition in Korea or China, and would exhaust their strength in endeavouring to realize their dreams. But his plan brought about the contrary result; for the generals formed fresh enmities among themselves, and thus the harvest that was subsequently reaped at Sekigahara found hands to sow it.
In October, 1600, with seventy-five thousand men, the future unifier of Japan stood on the ever-memorable field of Sékigahara. The opposing army, led largely by Christian commanders, left their fortress to meet the one whom they considered a usurper, in the open field. In the battle which ensued, probably the most decisive ever fought on the soil of Japan, ten thousand men lost their lives.
But the Nakasendo column of thirty-eight thousand men under Hidetada encountered such desperate resistance before the castle of Ueda, at the hands of Sanada Masayuki, that it did not reach Sekigahara until the great battle was over. Meanwhile, the western army had pushed steadily eastward.
He certainly did not put any such query to his own conscience in connexion with the castle of Osaka or its inmates. The battle of Sekigahara is often spoken of as the last great internecine campaign in Japanese history, but this is hardly borne out by the facts.
THE organization of the Tokugawa Bakufu cannot be referred to any earlier period than that of the third shogun, Iemitsu. The foundations indeed were laid after the battle of Sekigahara, when the administrative functions came into the hands of Ieyasu. But it was reserved for Iemitsu to develop these initial creations into a competent and consistent whole.
After the battle of Sekigahara had established his administrative supremacy, and after he had retired from the shogunate in favour of Hidetada, Ieyasu applied himself during his residence at Sumpu to collecting old manuscripts, and shortly before his death he directed that the Japanese section of the library thus formed should be handed over to his eighth son, the baron of Owari, and the Chinese portion to his ninth son, the baron of Kii.
Historians differ as to the exact date of the establishment of the Yedo Bakufu, but the best authorities are agreed that the event should be reckoned from the battle of Sekigahara, since then, for the first time, the administrative power came into the hand of the Tokugawa baron, he having previously been simply the head of a board instituted by the Taiko.
When Ieyasu, after the battle of Sekigahara, distributed the fiefs throughout the Empire, he gave four important estates to his own sons, namely, Echizen to Hideyasu; Owari to Tadayoshi; Mito to Nobuyoshi, and Echigo to Tadateru.
Indeed, from what has been said above, it will be seen that Sekigahara was merely a prelude to Osaka, and that the former stood to the latter almost in the relation of a preliminary skirmish. It is from August, 1615, that we must date the commencement of the long period of peace with which Japan was blessed under Tokugawa rule. The year-name was then changed to Genna.
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