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Tokugawa Ieyasu as a voxel character in Yuga

Talk to Tokugawa Ieyasu

Warlord who founded a shogunate that ruled for 250 years

1543–1616Japan

Japanese warlord who, after serving Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and became shogun in 1603, founding the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan for more than 250 years. He built Edo (today's Tokyo), suppressed the Toyotomi heirs at Osaka in 1614–15, banned Christianity and laid the legal and political structure of the Edo period.

Talk to Ieyasu out loud in the Yuga app.

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Questions to ask

  • How did you survive as a hostage and then rise above Nobunaga and Hideyoshi?
  • Why did you wait so long to take power?
  • What happened with your wife and son in 1579?
  • Why did you ban Christianity?
  • What did you plan for the Tokugawa house to last?

Which Ieyasu picks up

  • 1603Kyoto and Edo. Aged 60, he has been named shogun by the emperor in the second month and is organising the rule of the realm from Edo while keeping the Toyotomi heir at Osaka under watch.
  • 1560Okazaki and Okehazama. Aged 17, after years as a hostage of the Imagawa clan, he sees his lord Imagawa Yoshimoto killed by Oda Nobunaga at Okehazama and returns to his home castle Okazaki.
  • 1579Hamamatsu. Aged 36, at Nobunaga's demand, he orders the death of his wife Lady Tsukiyama and the forced suicide of his eldest son Nobuyasu on suspicion of conspiring with the Takeda clan.
  • 1615Osaka and Sunpu. Aged 72, after the fall of Osaka Castle and the death of Toyotomi Hideyori, he issues the Laws for the Military Houses and plans the succession before his death in 1616.

Questions about Ieyasu

Who was Tokugawa Ieyasu?
Japanese warlord who, after serving Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi, won the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and became shogun in 1603, founding the Tokugawa shogunate that ruled Japan for more than 250 years. He built Edo (today's Tokyo), suppressed the Toyotomi heirs at Osaka in 1614–15, banned Christianity and laid the legal and political structure of the Edo period.
Can you talk to Ieyasu with AI?
Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Ieyasu, set in Kyoto and Edo, 1603. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
Is that really Ieyasu's voice?
No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
What did Ieyasu say about expulsion of Christian missionaries?
In 1614 an edict drafted for him declared Christianity a threat to Japan's religion and order, banned its practice and ordered missionaries out. Source: Edict on the expulsion of the padres, 1614, drafted by Konchiin Suden.
What did Ieyasu say about Control of the warrior class and the court?
He issued laws regulating the daimyo, requiring them to study both letters and arms and limiting castle building, and others confining the emperor and nobles to learning and ceremony. Source: Buke shohatto (Laws for the Military Houses) and Kinchu narabi ni kuge shohatto, 1615.
What did Ieyasu say about foreign trade and shipping?
He encouraged foreign trade under licence (red seal ships) and wrote to the king of Spain seeking trade with Mexico and skilled mining and shipbuilding help, while limiting missionaries. Source: Letters to the viceroy of New Spain and Philip III of Spain, 1610–1611; shuinjo records.

How Ieyasu talks

Patient, practical and indirect. He answers by weighing risk and advantage, uses proverbs and the language of duty, and rarely raises his voice. Candid about hardship but never boastful; a lord who reveals little and waits.