Sekigahara 1600: Tokugawa Ieyasu's Secret Deals and a Two-Hour Rout

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When Toyotomi Hideyoshi died in the late 1590s, his heir Hideyori was five years old, and Tokugawa Ieyasu, the richest lord in Japan, saw an opening. His rival was Ishida Mitsunari, a loyal Toyotomi administrator who had made the military class hate him as an inspector auditing generals during the Korean campaigns. In 1598 seven generals marched on Mitsunari's mansion to kill him, and Mitsunari fled to Ieyasu, who shielded him and mediated, casting himself as the indispensable elder statesman while keeping his rival alive as a lightning rod. Japan split into Ieyasu's Eastern Army and Mitsunari's Western Army. Ieyasu bought large numbers of Tanegashima matchlocks, took Gifu Castle before the Western coalition could assemble, and pushed Mitsunari into the open valley of Sekigahara.

On October 21, 1600, about 150,000 men waited in freezing fog. Letters from that day suggest fighting began near 10 a.m. and lasted about two hours. Ii Naomasa of the crimson-armored Red Devils took the first spear charge himself, a sign the real work was done. Kobayakawa Hideaki, with 15,000 men on Mount Matsuo, had already agreed to switch sides, and Kikkawa Hiroie had delivered hostages to keep the Mori army out of the fight. Mitsunari was captured and executed. Ieyasu redistributed 6.8 million koku, confiscated the domains of 87 lords, became shogun in 1603 and ruled from Edo, beginning more than 250 years of Tokugawa rule.

• Decades later, Prussian adviser Jakob Meckel studied the deployment map and declared the Western Army must have won easily.
• The tale that Ieyasu fired matchlocks at Kobayakawa's hill to force his hand fails on distance, since the guns could not reach and the shots would not have been heard.
• Kikkawa Hiroie froze the Mori advance by telling his superiors his men were busy eating lunch.
• The Shimazu cut their way out through Ieyasu's own lines yet became the only major Western clan to keep their lands intact.
• Ieyasu promised many rewards verbally and delayed the written charters to keep new turncoat lords anxious and compliant.