Shimabara Nagasaki Japan
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Shimabara had once been the domain of the Arima lordly family, which had been Christian; as a result, many locals are also Christian.
The Arima were moved out in 1614 and replaced by the Matsukura.
The new lord, Matsukura Shigemasa, had hoped to advance in the shogunate hierarchy and had involved himself with various construction projects, including the building and expansion of Edo Castle, as well as a planned invasion of Luzon.
He had also built a new castle at Shimabara.
As a result, he had placed a greatly disproportionate tax burden on the people of his new domain, and further angered them by strictly persecuting Christianity.
Those affected also include fishermen, craftsmen and merchants.
Even the Dutch, who have a trading post nearby and are anti-Catholic, had been startled at the excessive degree of repression.
These policies have been continued by Shigemasa's heir, Katsuie.
The inhabitants of the Amakusa Islands, which had been part of the fief of Konishi Yukinaga, suffer the same sort of persecution at the hands the Terasawa family, which, like the Matsukura, had been moved there by the Shogunate.
Other masterless samurai in the region include former retainers of Katō Tadahiro and Sassa Narimasa, both of whom had once ruled parts of Higo Province.
The discontented, masterless samurai of the region, as well as the peasants, have begun to meet in secret and plot an uprising; this breaks out in the autumn of 1637, when the local daikan (tax official) Hayashi Hyōzaemon is assassinated.
At the same time, others rebel n the Amakusa Islands.
The rebels quickly increased their ranks by forcing all in the areas they take to join in the uprising.
A charismatic sixteen year-old youth, Amakusa Shirō, is soon chosen as the rebellion's leader.
The rebels besiege the Terasawa clan's Tomioka and Hondo castles, but just before the castles are about to fall, armies from the neighboring domains in Kyūshū arrive, and force them to retreat.
The rebels then cross he Ariake Sea and briefly besiege Matsukura Katsuie's Shimabara Castle, but are again repelled.
At this point they gather on the site of Hara Castle, which had been the castle of the Arima clan before their move to the Nobeoka Domain, but had since been dismantled.
They build up palisades using the wood from the boats with which they had they had crossed the water, and are greatly aided in their preparations by the weapons, ammunition, and provisions they had plundered from the Matsukura clan's storehouses.
The allied armies of the local domains, under the command of the Tokugawa shogunate with Itakura Shigemasa as commander-in-chief, now invest Hara Castle.
The swordsman Miyamoto Musashi is present in the besieging army, in an advisory role to Hosokawa Tadatoshi.
The army requests aid from the Dutch, who first give them gunpowder, and then cannons.
Nicolaes Couckebacker, Opperhoofd of the Dutch trading station on Hirado, provides the gunpowder and cannons, and when the shogunate forces requests that he send a vessel, he personally accompanies the vessel de Ryp to a position offshore, near Hara Castle.
The cannons sent previously are mounted in a battery, and an all-out bombardment of the fortress commences, both from the shore guns as well as from the twenty guns of the de Ryp.
These guns fire approximately four hundred and twenty-six rounds in the space of fifteen days, without great result, and two Dutch lookouts are shot by the rebels.
The ship withdraws at the request of the Japanese, following contemptuous messages sent by the rebels to the besieging troops: "Are there no longer courageous soldiers in the realm to do combat with us, and weren't they ashamed to have called in the assistance of foreigners against our small contingent?"
In an attempt to take the castle, Itakura Shigemasa is killed.
More shogunate troops under Matsudaira Nobutsuna, Itakura's replacement, soon arrives.
The rebels at Hara Castle resist the siege for months and cause the shogunate heavy losses.
Both sides have a hard time fighting in winter conditions.
A rebel raid on February 3, 1638, kills two thousand warriors from the Hizen Domain.
The rebels, despite this minor victory, slowly begin to run out of food, ammunition and other provisions.
Over twenty-seven thousand rebels face about one hundred and twenty-five thousand shogunate soldiers by April 1638.
Desperate rebels mount an assault against them on April 4 and are forced to withdraw.
Captured survivors and the fortress's rumored sole traitor, Yamada Uemonsaku, reveal the fortress is out of food and gunpowder.
Troops under the command of the Kuroda clan of Hizen on April 12 storm the fortress and capture the outer defenses.
The rebels continue to hold out and cause heavy casualties until they are routed on April 15.
After the castle falls, the shogunate forces behead an estimated thirty-seven thousand rebels and sympathizers.
Amakusa Shirō's severed head is taken to Nagasaki for public display, and the entire complex at Hara Castle is burned to the ground and buried together with the bodies of all the dead.
The shogunate, in another part of its actions after the rebellion, had excused the clans that had aided its efforts militarily from the building contributions that it routinely requires from various domains.
Matsukura Katsuie commits suicide, and his domain is given to another lord, Kōriki Tadafusa.
The Terazawa clan survives, but will die out almost ten years later, due to Katataka's lack of a successor.
On the Shimabara peninsula, most towns experience a severe to total loss of population as a result of the rebellion.
In order to maintain the rice fields and other crops, immigrants are brought from other areas across Japan to resettle the land.
All inhabitants are registered with local temples, whose priests are required to vouch for their members' religious affiliation.
Following the rebellion, Buddhism is strongly promoted in the area.
Certain customs are introduced which remain unique to the area today.
Towns on the Shimabara peninsula also continue to have a varied mix of dialects due to the mass immigration from other parts of Japan.
With the exception of periodic, localized peasant uprisings, the Shimabara Rebellion, Catholicism's last gasp as an open religion, is to be the last large-scale armed clash in Japan until the Meiji Restoration.
It it is the worst volcanic-related eruption in Japan to date.