Tokugawa clan

The Tokugawa kamon, as seen on the gates of Kan'ei-jii.

• Japanese: 徳川家 (Tokugawa-ke)

The Tokugawa served as the Shôgun of Japan from 1603 until 1867 and were therefore the longest - and most stable - of Japan's three bakufu. The Tokugawa's actual roots are obscure for while Ieyasu claimed descent from the Nitta and therefore the Seiwa-Minamoto, there seems to be little historical evidence of this. The genealogy Ieyasu commissioned claimed that a branch of the Kôzuke Nitta had taken the name Tokugawa and later transferred to Mikawa province, where it was adopted into the Matsudaira clan. In fact, Ieyasu also maintained an alternate family history that suggested Fujiwara roots - which supports the supposition that the Tokugawa's early family tree was largely made out of whole cloth. The Tokugawa were 'officially' restored when Ieyasu petitioned the court to allow him to use the name Tokugawa in 1566.

They became the new Shôgun following the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) and a formal endorsement by the court in 1603. Ieyasu established three branch families whose role it was to provide heirs when the main line was unable to do so - these branches, the Kii, Mito, and Owari lines, came to be known as the Gosanke (lit. "honorable three houses"), and were of particularly elite status within Edo period Japan. To these would in time be added a number of junior branches, namely, the Hitotsubashi, Shimizu, and Tayasu. Along with other members of the Matsudaira clan, the lords of these lines were known collectively as the shinpan daimyô.

"Tokugawa," like Taira, Fujiwara, Minamoto, and Toyotomi, was an aristocratic clan name, bestowed by the Emperor. This set the Tokugawa apart from those who bore merely a samurai surname, such as Matsudaira, and who were thus jigenin, outsiders to the Court aristocracy.

Generals of the Tokugawa clan during the Sengoku Period

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Nobuyasu Tokugawa Hidetada Yûki Hideyasu Matsudaira Ietada Matsudaira Tadaaki Abe Masakatsu Amano Yasukage Hattori Hanzo Hiraiwa Chikayoshi Honda Tadakatsu Honda Masanobu Honda Masazumi Honda Yasushige Ii Naomasa Ii Naotaka Ina Tadatsugu Ishikawa Kazumasa Ishin Sûden Koriki Kiyonaga Mizuno Nobutomo Naitô Ienaga Naitô Nobunari Natsume Yoshinobu Ogasawara Ujisuke Okubo Tadayo Okubo Tadachika Okubo Nagayasu Okudaira Sadamasa Sakai Tadatsugu Sakikabara Yasumasa Suganuma Sadamitsu Torii Tadayoshi Torii Mototada Uemura Masakatsu Watanabe Moritsuna

References

• Initial text from Sengoku Biographical Dictionary (Samurai-Archives.com) FWSeal & CEWest, 2005