amakusa

Updated: April 30, 2025

In the early years of Jesuit propagandism in Japan, Shimabara and Amakusa had been the two most thoroughly Christianized regions, and in later days they were naturally the scene of the severest persecutions. Nevertheless, the people might have suffered in silence, as did their fellow believers elsewhere, had they not been taxed beyond endurance to supply funds for an extravagant feudatory.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

The Amakusa insurgents passed over from that island to Shimabara, and on the 27th of January, 1638, the whole body numbering, according to some authorities, twenty thousand fighting men with thirteen thousand women and children; according to others, little more than one-half of these figures took possession of the dilapidated castle of Kara, which stood on a plateau with three sides descending one hundred feet perpendicularly to the sea and with a swamp on the fourth side.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Thus, he did not hesitate to have recourse to arms in order to obtain for the Jesuits access to the island of Amakusa, where one of the local barons, tempted originally by tradal prospects and afterwards urged by his wife, called upon his vassals to choose between conversion or exile, and issued an order that any Buddhist priests refusing to accept Christianity would have their property confiscated and their persons banished.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

But ultimately three merchant vessels appeared in the offing and announced their willingness to put in provided that the anti-Christian ban was removed. This remonstrance proved effective. A parallel case occurred a few years later in the island of Amakusa.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

At the close of 1637, there occurred a rebellion, historically known as the "Christian Revolt of Shimabara," which put an end to Japan's foreign intercourse for over two hundred years. The Gulf of Nagasaki is bounded on the west by the island of Amakusa and by the promontory of Shimabara.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era