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Hostage life

As Oda Nobuhide continued to attack Okazaki, Hirotada turned to his powerful eastern neighbor, Imagawa Yoshimoto for assistance. Yoshimoto agreed to an alliance under the condition that Hirotada send his young heir to Sunpu Domain as a hostage. Oda Nobuhide learned of this arrangement and had Takechiyo abducted. Takechiyo was five years old at the time. Nobuhide threatened to execute Takechiyo unless his father severed all ties with the Imagawa clan. However, Hirotada refused, stating that sacrificing his own son would show his seriousness in his pact with the Imagawa. Despite this refusal, Nobuhide chose not to kill Takechiyo, but instead held him hostage for the next three years at the Honshōji Temple in Nagoya. It was said that Oda Nobunaga met Takechiyo at the temple, when Takechiyo was 6 years old, and Nobunaga was 14. However, Katsuhiro Taniguchi reported there is no concrete historical records about this story of first meeting between Ieyasu with Nobunaga.

In 1549, when Takechiyo was 6, his father Hirotada died of unknown causes. There was a popular theory that he was murdered by his vassals, who had been bribed by the Oda clan. However, recent research stated that the assassination theory was unreliable and Hirotada's death may have been caused by a natural illness. At about the same time, Oda Nobuhide died during an epidemic. Nobuhide's death dealt a heavy blow to the Oda clan.

In 1551, an army under the command of Imagawa Sessai laid siege to the castle where Oda Nobuhiro, Nobuhide's illegitimate eldest son was living. Nobuhiro was trapped by the Imagawa clan but was saved through negotiation by Oda Nobunaga, Nobuhide's second son and heir. Sessai made an agreement with Nobunaga to take Takechiyo back to Imagawa, and he agreed. Takechiyo, now nine years old, was taken as a hostage to Sunpu. At Sunpu, he was treated fairly well as a potentially useful ally of the Imagawa clan until 1556 when he was 14 years old. Yoshimoto decided that the Matsudaira clan's territory will be inherited by Takechiyo in the future, with the aim that Imagawa clan could rule the area by extensions of their Matsudaira clan as their vassal, this including Zuien-in (the daughter of Matsudaira Nobutada and Takechiyo's great-aunt), who was the only member of the Anjo Matsudaira clan left in Okazaki Castle.