Tokugawa Ieyasu

Fushimi Castle, 24 March 1603

On the twelfth day of Keichō 8's second month — 24 March 1603 — the imperial envoy Kajūji Mitsutoyo came to Ieyasu at Fushimi Castle and conveyed Emperor Go-Yōzei's appointment of him as sei-i taishōgun.

The investiture occurred at Fushimi, south of Kyoto, not at Edo. Wooden clappers announced the imperial representatives' entrance before they presented the decree.

What came with it

Ieyasu simultaneously received the office of Minister of the Right, leadership of the Minamoto lineage and of the Junna and Shōgaku academies, and permission to use an ox carriage and armed attendants.

After the ceremony he hosted a banquet and sent the imperial delegates back to Kyoto with silver, gold and a horse bearing a raised gold saddle marked with his crest.

A formality over an existing fact

Sekigahara had already made Ieyasu Japan's dominant military power. The appointment supplied the established legal and ceremonial title through which a warrior government could be formalised; it did not give him control he had lacked the previous day.

1603 became the conventional founding year of the Edo bakufu, whose political headquarters was Edo even though the investiture took place at Fushimi and Kyoto remained the imperial capital.

Two years later Ieyasu surrendered the title to his son Hidetada — a signal that shogunal succession would be Tokugawa and hereditary.