Battle of Sekigahara
The battle that decided who would rule Japan for the next two and a half centuries was fought in fog on 21 October 1600 and lasted about six hours. Hideyoshi had unified the country and died in 1598 leaving a five-year-old heir and a council of five regents, which is a formula for war. Tokugawa Ieyasu was the strongest of them, and Ishida Mitsunari assembled a western coalition to stop him in the name of the Toyotomi child. Something like 160,000 men met at a narrow pass in the mountains between the eastern and western halves of the country, in rain and then mist. On paper the western army held better ground and had the numbers. In practice Ieyasu had spent months writing letters. The fighting was even into the early afternoon. Then Kobayakawa Hideaki, holding a hill on the western flank with some 15,000 men, did not move when signalled to attack, and Ieyasu had his gunners fire on him to force a decision. He charged his own allies, and four more western commanders changed sides with him. The western army collapsed within two hours. Mitsunari was caught in the hills days later and beheaded in Kyoto. Ieyasu was appointed shogun in 1603, and the lords were reclassified by whether they had been with him before Sekigahara or after — a distinction the Tokugawa maintained for 265 years, and one reason the domains that overthrew them in 1868 were the western ones. Kobayakawa was rewarded with a large domain and died two years later at twenty-one, reportedly drinking himself to death, and his line ended with him. The Toyotomi heir survived at Osaka until Ieyasu found a pretext to destroy the castle in 1615.
- Year: 1600 CE
- Category: Military
