Titans of History

Ieyasu’s network of control spread outward. His canny governance, disciplined armies and ability to spot the weaknesses of others made him one of Japan’s most influential daimyos (feudal barons). He never overreached himself, however. Realizing after a few minor skirmishes that he was not yet strong enough to triumph on his own, he vowed fealty to Japan’s dominant warlord, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. He also avoided involvement in the disastrous military expeditions to Korea that incapacitated so many of his rival daimyos.

Ieyasu’s domain became the most prosperous in Japan. He encouraged artisans, businessmen and traders to come to Edo, the fishing village he chose as his base. Edo flourished, growing into the bustling town and port that was later to be renamed Tokyo.

Ieyasu’s willingness to bide his time secured him an unassailable power base. Finally, in 1600, at the Battle of Sekigahara, Ieyasu emerged triumphant over his rivals as the undisputed master of Japan. Three years later the imperial court appointed him shogun—the title borne since the 12th century by those warrior-governors who are the real power in Japan, the powerless emperors having only a ceremonial role as figureheads.

Ieyasu consolidated his clan’s claim to the shogunate as diligently as he had consolidated his authority over his territory. After only two years as shogun he passed the title on to his son, thus establishing a hereditary claim that endured for 250 years. He made sure that no daimyo could become as powerful as he had by obliging all daimyos

to spend long periods at court, thus undermining their ability to build up a local power base. When they were allowed to return to their own domains, Ieyasu kept their families as virtual hostages in Edo.

The small, stout Ieyasu trusted his maverick judgment to see him through. He appointed a falconer as a diplomat, and made an actor the director of mines. His enthusiasm for trading with the Europeans filled his vast warehouses with rice and gold. Will Adams, a Kentish shipbuilder who was shipwrecked by a typhoon on Japanese shores, became one of Ieyasu’s most valued commercial advisers.

Ieyasu allowed nothing to threaten Japan’s new-found unity and stability, and to this end in 1614 he suppressed Christianity and imprisoned all foreign missionaries. Long tolerant of Christianity, Ieyasu did not initiate the religious killings that his descendants practiced—his motive was purely to prevent sectarian divisions among his countrymen. A stream of new laws established stringent control over every stratum of society, curtailing people’s freedom of movement but ensuring a stability that Japan had not seen for a century. In 1615, in his most ruthless act, Ieyasu secured Tokugawa pre-eminence by destroying his family’s last rivals to the shogunate, the Toyotomi. Among those put to death was his own grandson by marriage.

The shogun died a year later, from wounds sustained in the battle that finally extinguished the threat of the Toyotomi.

GALILEO

1564–1642

I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them

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Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina” (1615)

Galileo Galilei helped to transform the way that people looked at the world—and the universe beyond. A physicist, mathematician and astronomer, Galileo made fundamental discoveries about the nature of motion and the movement of the planets. He realized the importance of experimentation and held that the physical world was best understood through mathematics. His insistence that the universe should be analyzed via reason and evidence brought him into conflict with the Church, but his discoveries long outlasted the Inquisition that sought to suppress them.

Galileo’s father was a musician, and the young man may well have helped with paternal experiments into the tension and pitch of strings. His formal education took place at Pisa University, where he matriculated in 1581, initially to study medicine. To his father’s disapproval, Galileo spent most of his time on mathematics and left the university without a degree in 1585.

Galileo continued to study mathematics for the next four years, earning money through private tuition until he was appointed to a chair at the university in 1589. It was during this time that he supposedly demonstrated his theory of the speed of falling objects by dropping weights from Pisa’s leaning tower.