Shimabara & Amakusa
Atlas / Shimabara & Amakusa
The ruined castle where the Shimabara–Amakusa uprising ended in 1638, and the hidden era began.
In 1637 farmers and masterless samurai of Shimabara and Amakusa, many of them Christian and led by the young Amakusa Shirō, rose against heavy taxation and persecution. They held Hara Castle for months before it fell in 1638 and almost all the defenders were killed.
The shogunate then tightened the ban on Christianity and closed the country to the Portuguese. UNESCO counts the ruins as the first component of the Hidden Christian Sites, marking the start of the hidden period.
