Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings: Sakai Tadatsugu, the oldest and most loyal retainer of the family, skilled in diplomacy

He gained the trust of Ieyasu by defeating Shibata Katsuie in the vanguard.

For the Tokugawa family, hereditary vassals are called “Mikawa-fudai” (Matsudaira vassals in the pioneer period). There are various theories, but Tadatsugu’s Sakai family is said to be of the same ancestry as Ieyasu’s Matsudaira family. For this reason, the Sakai family held important positions in the Tokugawa family for generations. The Sakai family is divided into the “Saemon-no-jo” and “Uta-no-kami” lines, and if you look at the history of the Tokugawa family, the Uta-no-kami line later produced people such as Tadaaki and Tadakatsu・Tadatoshi (Roju)・Tadayoshi・Tadayori・Tadashin (Roju), but for some reason no one from Tadatsugu’s Saemon-no-jo line rose to prominence. Nevertheless, he is praised as one of the “Tokugawa Four Heavenly Kings.”

Tadatsugu was born in 1527. He was 15 years older than Ieyasu. Tadatsugu served Ieyasu’s father Hirotada and remained by Ieyasu’s side as his guardian even while Ieyasu was a hostage of the Imagawa family in Suruga. When Ieyasu (then named Motoyasu Matsudaira, 15 years old) who had just come of age fought against the Oda army, Tadatsugu fought bravely as the vanguard and injured enemy general Shibata Katsuie and made him flee. From then on, it became customary for Ieyasu to always send Tadatsugu as the vanguard when he went out to battle. This is where we can see Tadatsugu’s character as one of the “Four Heavenly Kings”.

In 1564, when Ieyasu suppressed the Mikawa Ikko Uprising, he swept away the remaining power of Imagawa Ujizane in eastern Mikawa and made Tadatsugu the Lord of Yoshida Castle. He then placed the Matsudaira collateral families and various families in eastern Mikawa under Tadatsugu’s command and made him the top man in eastern Mikawa. The fact that he was entrusted with eastern Mikawa, which was adjacent to Imagawa territory, shows how much Tadatsugu was trusted by Ieyasu. At this time, Ieyasu entrusted western Mikawa to the Ishikawa family (first Kanari and later Kazumasa).

Tadatsugu’s army marched with a flag of a rising sun on a white background. In 1570, at the Battle of Anegawa, Tadatsugu led 1,000 soldiers as the first vanguard of the Tokugawa army.

Tadatsugu also had high diplomatic skills and was involved in all aspects of Ieyasu’s alliance with Uesugi Kenshin (then Terutora) in Echigo.

In December 1572 at the Battle of Mikatagahara, when Ieyasu was defeated by Takeda Shingen and fled back to Hamamatsu Castle, he purposefully opened the castle gates. The pursuing Takeda army withdrew thinking “there must be some trick”, but at that time Tadatsugu beat a drum and encouraged the castle soldiers inside. This later became a famous scene known as “Sakai’s Drum” in plays and other works.

Despite being so trusted by Ieyasu, Tadatsugu made a mistake when he visited Nobunaga at Azuchi Castle during the seppuku incident involving Ieyasu’s eldest son Nobuyasu. He was questioned by Nobunaga on 12 points and admitted to 10 of them. This was a trap set by Nobunaga (to blow up difficult questions), but as a result, Ieyasu killed Nobuyasu and his wife Tsukiyama-dono on Nobunaga’s orders. Later on, when he appealed to Ieyasu that his successor Kazutsugu’s intention on inheritance was low during the transition between old and new Sakai families, Ieyasu sarcastically said to him “So you also love your children?” This was also a backlash against Tadatsugu, who had been involved in the seppuku of Nobuyasu. Tadatsugu, who retired, lived to be 70 years old and died in Kyoto in 1596.

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