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Updated: June 7, 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.
Yet they bore tortures and endured death with a fortitude not surpassed by that of the martyrs of old, clinging with the highest Christian ardor to their new faith. In 1637 these excesses of persecution led to an insurrection, the native Christians rising in thousands, seizing an old castle at Shimabara, and openly defying their persecutors.
A strong castle on the Kyushu coast, held by thirty or forty thousand Christians, constituted a serious danger, a point of vantage from which a Spanish invasion of the country might have been attempted with some chance of success. The government seems to have recognized this danger, and to have despatched in consequence an overwhelming force to Shimabara.
So far as concerns the policy of such massacre, it may be remembered that, with less provocation, Nobunaga exterminated the Tendai Buddhists at Hiyei-san. We have every reason to pity the brave men who perished at Shimabara, and to sympathize with their revolt against the atrocious cruelty of their rulers.
The heads of these two fiefs were brothers, and thus when Sumitada embraced Christianity the Jesuits received an invitation to visit Arima at the ports of Kuchinotsu and Shimabara, where from that time Portuguese ships repaired frequently.
Takanobu sent an army against Yoshizumi, but the Satsuma baron despatched Shimazu Masahisa to Yoshizumi's aid, and a sanguinary engagement at Shimabara in 1585 resulted in the rout of Takanobu's forces and his own death.
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