- Shogun
William Shakespeare and the first Tokugawa Shogun are linked by one very important fact[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]
Ieyasu Tokugawa (1543-1616), who founded a military state and a dynasty of shoguns that lasted 265 years, would not look out of place in one of Shakespeare’s Machiavellian plays.
Most of Shakespeare’s works were produced between 1589-1613 when Tokugawa was busy building alliances and fighting historically important battles in feudal Japan.
In 1603, when Tokugawa became the first Tokugawa Shogun, it is very unlikely that Shakespeare would have known anything about this samurai warlord who fought six major battles in his lifetime before initiating Japan’s longest period of peace and stability.
Had he known, he might have written a play about this warlord to complement such plays as The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, with a narrative that revolves around the themes of loyalty, patience and opportunistic cunning.
The decisive battle involving 160,000 men that gave Tokugawa control of Japan was fought in 1600 at Sekigahara around the time that Shakespeare was writing Hamlet – and a few years before he penned Macbeth.
Tokugawa understood the importance of literature and was interested in the world outside Japan. King James I exchanged letters and gifts, including Japanese armour and a silver telescope, with him. And it is possible, but unlikely, that Tokugawa might have been made aware of Shakespeare through William Adams (1564-1620) the English navigator from Kent who become an important advisor to the Shogun on all things Western.
During his lifetime, Shakespeare did not enjoy the reputation he does today, and was considered by his contemporaries as one of many talented playwrights active at that time. Adams, whose life was fictionalized in the 1975 novel Shogun by James Clavell (1924-1994), arrived in Japan in 1600. The Bard of Avon’s popularity and reputation would have been growing but really only took off and became established after the publication in 1623 of Shakespeare‘s works in the First Folio, three years after Adams’s death.
Interestingly, when the Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) adapted Shakespeare’s plays into films set in Japan, he set them in feudal Japan during the Senkoku period (1467-1603), which ended when Tokugawa came to power and the Edo Period (1603-1868) commenced.
Kurosawa’s first adaptation was Macbeth in 1957, which became The Throne of Blood. He then went on to make other successful films based on Shakespeare’s plays including King Lear and Hamlet.
Aside from the links between the dramatic narratives that featured in both Shakespeare’s plays and the events in Tokugawa’s life, the one uncanny fact that unites the two men is the year of their death: 1616.
Despite Tokugawa’s much riskier lifestyle, the warlord died at the age of 74, while Shakespeare died at the age of 52. Both men, however, left remarkable legacies that still resonate with students and academics today.
- TOPICS:
- History
- Shakespeare
- Shogun
