Ponna
More than 400 years ago, a baby boy named Takechiyo was born in Okazaki Castle, Mikawa Kingdom (present-day Okazaki City, Aichi Prefecture), the eldest son of Hiroshi Matsudaira, lord of Okazaki Castle, who changed his name and surname several times and became the "founder" of the Edo shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616). Since birth, Tokugawa Ieyasu has been shrouded in a mysterious aura. According to historical records, Tokugawa Ieyasu was the son of his mother, Yu Ōnokata, who prayed at Theoga-ji Temple in Mikawa Province. From the Edo heyday founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu to the Meiji Restoration at the beginning of modernization, through Showa and Heisei, to today's Reiwa era, the myth of Tokugawa Ieyasu has endured for a long time. In 2016, the 400th anniversary of Tokugawa Ieyasu's death, large-scale festivals were held in many parts of Japan, including Nikko Toshogu Shrine. If we say why the topic of Tokugawa Ieyasu has remained hot for a long time to this day, it is probably because the bones of Tokugawa Ieyasu, who created the Edo myth, have the most primitive and authentic spiritual genes of the Japanese Yamato nation lurking in the depths.
Nikko Toshogu Shrine dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu
About Tokugawa Ieyasu, there have been several famous biographies and novels in Japanese academic circles. One of the earliest and most classic works written is the 1965 Biography of Tokugawa Ieyasu, completed by historian Takaya Nakamura. This is a book of great historical value, in which almost all of Tokugawa Ieyasu's surviving documents are sorted out and summarized chronologically, and some important documents are followed by examination and explanation. In this way, Takashi Nakamura also connects the lives of Tokugawa Ieyasu to the reader. In addition, the more famous biographies include Takanari Hondo's Tokugawa Ieyasu and Shoji Fujii's Tokugawa Ieyasu, both of which use first-hand information as the core to narrate and interpret Tokugawa Ieyasu's life from the "hostage period" in his infancy to the "Daigosho" in his later years. In addition to biographies, there are also biographical novels about Tokugawa Ieyasu. Among them, the two most famous are Shohachi Yamaoka's Tokugawa Ieyasu and Sima Liaotaro's "Tokugawa Trilogy" - "Overlord House", "Sekigahara", and "Castle". Shohachi Yamaoka portrays Ieyasu as a great man, even a "superman," with a touch of legend, while Sima Liaotaro's "trilogy" sharply outlines the relatively real and plump Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Takaya Nakamura's Tokugawa Ieyasu Biography
Shohachi Yamaoka's Tokugawa Ieyasu series
In contrast, Masashi Hosaka's Tokugawa Ieyasu uses delicate brushstrokes to portray a three-dimensional portrait of an "ordinary" great man. The biographical novel was completed in 2014 and Chinese published in January 2021 by a translation by He Xiaoyi. The novel also became a posthumous work by Masashi Hosaka. The year after the completion of the manuscript, Masashi Hosaka died of illness. He almost fully integrated his spiritual world into the writing of Tokugawa Ieyasu. "Just now, Ieyasu's soul possessed me!" This is masashi Hosaka's inner monologue in the afterword to the original book.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, by Masashi Hosaka, translated by He Xiaoyi, Shandong Literature and Art Publishing House, January 2021
The book uses two important clues to show Tokugawa Ieyasu's sincere and rich emotional world: one is the young and beautiful Nai Nai created by Masashi Hosaka, whose true feelings and temptations and betrayals go hand in hand, and tokugawa Ieyasu and Nai Nai have a beautiful relationship like ordinary mortals; the other is to describe the juvenile friendship between Tokugawa Ieyasu and Oda Nobunaga, who is also a "worldly person". This is a description based on historical facts, corresponding to the "Cheongju Alliance" that shocked various daimyo at that time. It is only when it comes to this youthful friendship that Masashi Hosaka devotes more ink to portraying tokugawa Ieyasu's inner world of trusting and even admiring Oda Nobunaga. Even, "Through Nobunaga, Ieyasu learned the greatness of the world." It can be said that Masashi Hosaka is not only writing a biography of a "great man of the century" - he founded the Tokugawa shogunate as a "pre-modern" period in Japan, so that Japan has more than 200 years of peace and prosperity to recuperate and recuperate, and at the same time depicts the real life of a "common man", flesh and blood, three-dimensional and plump. In the first half of the book, Masashi Hosaka paints a vivid picture of Tokugawa Ieyasu's tortuous and difficult boyhood: being a hostage under a fence, being humiliated and laughing, and being called the "country boy of Mikawa"; the rebellion he faced after finally ending his hostage life and returning to mikawa Kingdom; and even the detailed narrative of being thrown into the water by Oda Nobunaga as a child and learning to swim in fear... These are the bittersweet bitterness of Tokugawa Ieyasu's youth. But it was such a flesh-and-blood "mortal", who knew how to endure and hide, and eventually became the most successful counterattacker in the chaotic world of Japanese war. "Tokugawa Ieyasu's life... Not handsome at all, but determined, no matter how ugly and awkward, insisted on walking, and ended up living to the end, standing firmly on the ground. This is what Masashi Hosaka said about Tokugawa Ieyasu's life in the afterword.
In fact, historical and even modern academic evaluations of Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Edo period have been mixed. There are not many people who think that Tokugawa Ieyasu was hypocritical and cunning, and that the Edo period was feudal and closed. Moreover, although Toyotomi Hideyoshi entrusted his young son to Tokugawa Ieyasu before his death, Tokugawa Ieyasu still ruthlessly uprooted the Toyotomi regime. Masashi Hosaka explains this in his book, "The world is not the property of Hideyoshi alone, let alone the toyotomi family... The world is by no means something that can be grasped by small human hands", "The world is not the world of one person, but the world of the world of the world". It can be said that such a description is more in line with historical facts. In the historical records, Tokugawa Ieyasu, in order to give his crusade against the Toyotomi clan a corresponding rationality and legitimacy, through the advice of Lin Luoshan, he used the historical allusion of Mencius's "Tang Wu Fang". That is, in accordance with the will of Heaven, the virtuous must take the place of the unethical to govern the world. This fully contains the ancient Chinese idea of "Heavenly Dao". It is for this reason that even after replacing the Toyotomi regime, Masashi Hosaka still focused on portraying the image of Ieyasu who was extremely "righteous" in the book. It is repeatedly mentioned in the book, "If Ieyasu wants to choose between profit and righteousness, he must choose 'righteousness' even if he throws his head and spills blood", "There is a principle, more important than life!" ...... Lutheran...... If there is no faith, there is no point in being a samurai, not only as a warrior, but even as a human being." It can be seen that Masashi Hosaka portrayed Tokugawa Ieyasu as a righteous samurai. And on this point – is the historical Tokugawa Ieyasu more inclined to choose "righteousness" or "profit"? Everyone has a Hamlet in their hearts, and it is true that more people in the future will explore and comment on it.
However, as mentioned earlier, Masashi Hosaka has both a romantic side and a very realistic side in portraying the image of Ieyasu. From Tokugawa Ieyasu's change of name and surname to the step-by-step conquest of the world for the camp, it is all based on historical facts. The book uses many historical materials such as the Tokugawa Shiki, Nobunaga Koji, Odawara Chronicle, and Koyo Junkan, especially when recounting major historical events such as the "Change of Honnoji Temple", the scene described by Masashi Honzagaki is very realistic, truly reproducing and restoring a Warring States era full of fire, reflecting the most precious historical value and significance of a biographical novel from the details.
Moreover, in addition to the high degree of restoration of historical events, Masashi Hosaka also focused on depicting one of the most representative characteristics of Tokugawa Ieyasu's personality, "forbearance". "When life must be patient", the word "forbearance" appears very frequently in Tokugawa Ieyasu's inner monologue. This is also recognized as the biggest personality trait of Tokugawa Ieyasu. In Japan, there is a saying about Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu: "Zizhi does not sound, Oda Nobunaga kills; Zizhi does not sound, Toyotomi Hideyoshi forces (teasing); Zizhi does not sound, Tokugawa Ieyasu treats." This is a very classic description, which intuitively shows the different personality characteristics of the three "people under the heavens" and the different styles of means of governing a country derived from this. In the book, Masashi Hosaka does not spare no effort to portray the outstanding characteristics of these three "people of the world". The first is the courage and cruelty of Oda Nobunaga. Throwing the teenager Ieyasu directly into the water while teaching him to swim, abandoning Tokugawa Ieyasu without mentioning anything in the chaos of the war, and the shocking "Burning of Mt. Hiei" incident, etc., all depict a character who is both bold and somewhat tyrannical, a person who is "the most faithful to his own desires"; followed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's intellectual. The man, who was jokingly called a "monkey" and came from a humble background, tried to discover his weakness when he first met Tokugawa Ieyasu, and "first exposed his weakness to make the other party let down his guard, and then drilled into the other person's heart.". This is very consistent with the description of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in another of Hosaka Masashi's novels, "Tenchiren", which has a set of philosophies of inter-joke interlude; and finally, Tokugawa Ieyasu's "Ninja Way", lying down to taste courage and carrying weights, which is also a well-known evaluation of Tokugawa Ieyasu. But in any book about Tokugawa Ieyasu, there is hardly anyone who does not mention the word "forbearance." It seems that "bearing the burden of humiliation" has become synonymous with Tokugawa Ieyasu's success. Not only was the tragic hostage life of his youth, but tokugawa Ieyasu also faced many trials and tribulations as an adult. From "Daimyo" to "Daimyo", Tokugawa Ieyasu left the old mikawa, where it was hard to establish, and was assigned by Toyotomi Hideyoshi to go to Edo (present-day Tokyo), which was not prosperous and had no foundation at that time. Later, from the head of the "Five Elders" (the five elders appointed by Toyotomi Hideyoshi as an advisor) to the shogunate, it can be said that the world of Japan was achieved by Tokugawa Ieyasu through the perseverance and patience of step by step. Some say it's because of Tokugawa Ieyasu's long lifespan, which may be one of the reasons, but by no means the most important. In the final chapter, Masashi Hosaka again mentions that Tokugawa Ieyasu "has no special abilities beyond ordinary people", and he attributes The reason why Tokugawa Ieyasu became the ultimate victor to "perseverance" - "the enthusiasm of the earth, plus a little luck". Therefore, Masashi Hosaka wrote an epic biography of an "ordinary great man"—a life that was not so "handsome" but wonderful.
This character trait of Tokugawa Ieyasu is a true portrayal of the Japanese Yamato national spirit. This may also be the reason why Masashi Hosaka made up his mind to write a biography of Ieyasu. In his epilogue, Tokugawa Ieyasu suffered greatly and was inconspicuous compared to Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, but became a true politician by insisting. In the meantime, all of this made Masashi Hosaka think of his own life, although he lived in a "clumsy way of survival" and had difficulty sleeping for overnight food, he never gave up writing. Therefore, "I don't know when in my heart began to overlap with Tokugawa Ieyasu's stupid and persistent life." In fact, not only the author, but also the entire development of Japanese society has also experienced such a stage of "stupid persistence". In the Edo period pioneered by Tokugawa Ieyasu, feudal closure at first glance was actually a powerful modernization force. As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to comment on Tokugawa Ieyasu's "righteousness" and "profit" for the time being, but if we look at it purely from the perspective of the development of the times, Tokugawa Ieyasu must have done more than it did. As written in the "Afterword" of this book, the influence of the Edo period on the Japanese people and Japanese society to this day is immeasurable. Even many of the characteristics of modern Japan were formed almost exclusively during the Edo period. The flourishing of Confucianism, the increase in literacy, and the prosperity of commerce were all gradually completed in the Edo period. More importantly, in the Edo period, due to the popularization of Zhuzi studies, the Japanese people's logical speculation ability improved by leaps and bounds, providing an indispensable ideological preparation for their subsequent acceptance of Western science and culture. The person who laid the foundation for Zhu Zixue's official status was Tokugawa Ieyasu. In the Tokugawa Chronicle, it is recorded that "(Tokugawa Ieyasu) is known that the new notes of the ancient commentary should be taught to the world by its own strengths... So the new note became popular. This laid a solid political foundation for the spread of Zhuzi studies throughout the Edo period. By the end of the shogunate period, Japan's cultural, economic, educational, and other fields had reached a stage of high development. Under the impetus of the late shogunate, the Meiji Restoration was completed in one fell swoop. It can be said that without the Edo period of more than two hundred years, without this seemingly backward but obscure historical period, the Meiji Restoration would not have been completed so thoroughly and successfully. Since the Meiji Restoration, Japan has slowly become one of the world's great powers. It was not until the end of the war that Japan ushered in a period of rapid economic growth (1955-1973) that lasted for nearly two decades, and the speed of its economic recovery attracted the world's attention. Although there are many reasons for japan's economic prosperity that cannot be generalized, one of the most important spiritual driving forces is the "forbearance" unique to the Japanese Yamato nation. This "forbearance" is embodied in the pursuit of personal life and is conceived within the framework of Japanese "collectivism" ( . There is a Japanese word for "sticky and strong", which means "tough and persevering", which is a virtue that japanese people highly advocate, and it is also a kind of praise and appreciation for others in Japanese society. Masashi Hosaka marveled at the fact that he had found his shadow in Tokugawa Ieyasu's life. Probably in addition, there are many shadows of ordinary Japanese people hiding in it. This strong sense of substitution is the reason why the "Ieyasu myth" has always been a hot topic.
Editor-in-Charge: Shanshan Peng
Proofreader: Yan Zhang