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Summary
Travel is an act for human beings to visit new places and experience different cultures and histories. Through travel, people can actually feel historical events and people’s lives by visiting historical places and cultural heritage sites, and can gain a deeper understanding of history and broaden their own perspectives. In this section, we will discuss the historical background of the trip and the places visited based on Ryotaro Shiba’s “Kaido yuku” (On the Road) about this journey and history.
Kaidou wo iku ol 17 shimabara amakusa.
In the previous article, I described the Hida travelogue. This time, I will describe the roads in Shimabara and Amakusa.
Christianity in Japan and the Roads of Shimabara and Amakusa
This trip will be to the Shimabara Peninsula in Nagasaki Prefecture, northwest of Kyushu, and the Amakusa Islands in Kumamoto Prefecture. The route of the trip includes a flight to Nagasaki, from Nagasaki Airport, along the Shimabara Peninsula to Shimabara Bay, through Shimabara Castle and Hara Castle to Kuchinotsu, where the story of the Shimabara Rebellion of the Edo Period begins. He then takes a ferry to Amakusa Shimojima in Kumamoto Prefecture, climbs the hill of Martyrdom Park at the ruins of Hondo (Hondo) Castle, and describes the Amakusa Shiro Rebellion that occurred at the same time as the Shimabara Rebellion.
This trip begins at Nagasaki Airport, which is located on the sea.
From Nagasaki Airport, we went through Isahaya and had a smoke at an Okoshiya on the outskirts of the town of Hino. The specialty of Isahaya is rice dumplings, and a plate of rice dumplings is served even if you have a cup of coffee at the rest area. Osaka’s okoshi is said to be chestnut okoshi, but Isahaya’s is traditional rice okoshi.
The history of okoshi as a confectionery is long, and it is said to have already existed more than 2,000 years ago, as it is mentioned in the Jinmu-ki of the Nihon-shoki (Chronicles of Japan). Isahaya, whose specialty is okoshi, is located on the way to the Shimabara Peninsula and has a narrow terrain like a branch. It is a narrow area sandwiched between Omura Bay to the west and Ariake Bay to the east, but it is blessed with rivers and forms a delta toward the Ariake Sea, which has been a good place for rice farming since ancient times. The Isahaya clan, a powerful family based here, would have been a feudal lord in Edo itself, but they lowered their own rank and joined the Nabeshima clan in Saga, where they became retainers. If he became a feudal lord, he would have had to pay the expenses of traveling to Edo, but if he became a retainer, he would not have had to pay such expenses, and it can be said that he gave up his name and took advantage of his position.
Shimabara, the destination of the trip, was the site of the Shimabara Rebellion, one of the largest revolts in Japanese history, which took place in the early Edo period (1630s). Together with the Amakusa Rebellion, a Christian-led uprising that occurred simultaneously in the adjacent Amakusa region of Kumamoto. It is called the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion.
Shigemasa Matsukura was originally a small feudal lord with a fief of about 3,000 koku in the Kinki region, but after Hideyoshi’s death, he joined Tokugawa Ieyasu in the Battle of Sekigahara (1600), and when the enemy collapsed at the end of the battle, he clung to Ieyasu and killed his head, appealing to him fiercely. He was said to have been an upwardly mobile man who won a 10,000-koku fief in Yamato and then a 40,000-koku fief in Shimabara.
Shimabara itself, unlike the aforementioned Isahaya, was a territory with little flat land along the sea, small rivers, and few rice paddies, and the feudal lords of the time tried to reduce the amount of taxes they had to pay to the shogunate by underreporting the amount of stones in their territories, but in order to become a castle-owning feudal lord himself (the minimum qualification for a castle-owning feudal lord was 40,000 koku In order to become a castle-owning feudal lord (the minimum qualification for a castle-owning feudal lord was 40,000 koku), he overreported his originally low income by more than the actual amount, and even requested to bear the burden of infrastructure construction by the shogunate (100,000 koku, far more than the 40,000 koku he was responsible for), which would normally make a normal feudal lord shy away from bearing such costs. He was an extremely self-centered and upwardly mobile feudal lord. (Similar people can be found in today’s large corporations…)
The lords overreported and overpaid taxes even though they had no income, continued to wave their sleeves without any economic basis to pay a large “helping hand” and put all the burden on the people of the fief. The taxation was so heavy that even the number of eggplants was counted by the person who burnt them, and a number of them were taken as tax. In order to punish those who could not pay the tax, they devised the most brutal methods humanly conceivable and even killed people.
The uprising of the Shimabara Rebellion was said to have driven the inhabitants past the stage of protecting their right to survive to the point of desperation, where they banded together to leave this world as quickly as possible.
At that time, Protestantism was flourishing in the world, especially in Europe, coinciding with the emergence of civil society, and the Jesuits were formed out of a sense of crisis among Catholics. The founder of the Jesuits was Ignatius de Loyola, a former military officer. Because the founder was a military man, the Jesuits were committed to military discipline, poverty, and chastity, and they began their missionary work with great courage. Among them, Loyola was seduced and took as a comrade Francisco Xavier, who is familiar to the Japanese.
Furthermore, in Europe, Spain and Portugal were embarking on an adventurous counterintelligence program abroad, and the Portuguese king at the time thought it necessary to Catholicize the region for the sake of uniforms and trade projects, so he begged the Pope. The Jesuits, who were at the forefront of the movement, were chosen to lead it, and Xavier was selected to be in charge of it, arriving in Japan in 1549.
Xavier was in Japan for only two years, but his absolute obedience to God, discipline, and piety struck a chord with many people, who felt that he was “completely different from Japanese monks” and that he was a decisive departure for the subsequent rise of Kirishitan.
As mentioned in “Jodo-kyo, which introduced the concept of parallel worlds, and the power of Amida Buddha,” Buddhism in Japan at that time had changed greatly from the Buddhism of the Buddha in India, and was changing from the liberation of the individual to the salvation of all people, in a way similar to the teachings of Christianity, so it could be said that it had the potential to be accepted. It can also be said that Christianity had a strong ethic of ethics.
As mentioned in “Reading the Core of Christianity: The Three Major Monotheistic Religions, the Old Testament, and Abraham,” Christianity has a strong ethic and speaks directly to the people in its own words, which has more impact on the people than Buddhism, which is composed of speculative words and rarely speaks to the people. The Christian stance of a strong sense of autonomy in contrast to the strong notion of “other power” in medieval Japanese society is also thought to have had an unprecedentedly strong impact on the people.
Furthermore, the sweet spirit of loyalty, which had been kept in the medieval people as an active duty, found a powerful sublimation in the form of being usable for Christ, the ruler of heaven, which was also the cause of its spread in Japan at that time, according to Ryotaro Shiba.
After the Christianity story is told, Ryotaro Shiba heads to the ruins of Shimabara Castle. During the Medieval and Warring States Periods, Kyushu was ruled by two powers: the Ryuzoji clan, based in Hizen Saga and ruling over northern Kyushu, and the Shimazu clan, based in Satsuma and ruling over southern Kyushu. In Shimabara, there was the Arima clan, which initially supported the Ryuzoji clan, but was then taken under Shimazu’s protection. Angered by this, Ryuzoji turned his troops to Shimabara, which became the site of the Okita ancient battlefield in Shimabara.
Here, Ryuzoji’s side, which had the numerical superiority (tens of thousands against 10,000), let their guard down and the general, Takanobu Ryuzoji, was defeated by Shimazu, who took his head.
From Okitanawate, they passed in the direction of the sea and headed for Shimabara Castle.
Behind Shimabara Castle is Mt. Unzen, which is still an active volcano and caused a massive pyroclastic flow in 1991.
Also located at the foot of Mt. Unzen is the famous Unzen Hot Springs.
In the town of Shimabara, there is a group of samurai residences with stone walls called Teppo-machi.
In Shimabara, it seems that they stayed at an inn called Kunimitsu-ya, which is now closed and no longer in business.
This is a long-established restaurant that has been in business for a long time, and was apparently the regular lodging of campsites for everyone from the Nishitetsu Lions to the Crown Lighter Lions.
After leaving Shimabara, we went to the site of the Amakusa Shiro Rebellion, which took place at the same time as the Shimabara Rebellion.
Heading for the ruins of Hara Castle
After this, the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion was the last medieval battle in which warriors fought in substance, as the peaceful Edo period lasted for 300 years since the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
The trip ends with a crossing to Amakusa and a visit to Oe Tenshudo, the earliest church built after the ban on Christianity was lifted (built by French Father Garnier in 1872).
In the next article, I will describe the Awa travelogue from Awaji Island to Tokushima.
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