The Shimabara-Amakusa Uprising: In 1637, Why Did a Sixteen-Year-Old Boy Become Commander-in-Chief?

On October 25, 1637 (Kan'ei 14), at Arima Village on the Shimabara Peninsula (modern Minami-Shimabara City, Nagasaki Prefecture).

An event occurred in which peasants killed the local official Hayashi Hyōzaemon.

It was direct counterattack by peasants against harsh land-tax collection. But this local incident spread in the blink of an eye to the Shimabara Peninsula and the opposite Amakusa Islands, developing into a large-scale uprising of peasants, rōnin, and Kirishitan.

Raised up as commander-in-chief was Masuda Shirō Tokisada of Ōyano-jima in the Amakusa Islands — age seventeen counted, the later Amakusa Shirō.

The government of Shimabara-domain lord Matsukura Katsuie (who succeeded his father Shigemasa) was the harshest even in the Japan of the time.

He over-reported Shimabara — whose actual yield was around 100,000 koku — as '140,000 koku,' and collected land tax from peasants based on the reported figure.

Torture of tax non-payers reached extremes, and executions such as the 'straw-raincoat dance' — dressing them alive in straw raincoats and setting them on fire — are recorded even in bakufu-side sources.

Karatsu-domain lord Terasawa Katataka's rule of the Amakusa Islands was similarly harsh.

This economic pressure became the direct spark of the uprising.

At the same time, the anti-Kirishitan prohibition by the bakufu had been strengthened in stages from 1614 onward.

Especially from 1633 on, the execution of missionaries, forced conversion of believers, and introduction of the fumie (image-treading test) began in earnest.

Shimabara and Amakusa had been the territories of former Kirishitan daimyō (Arima Harunobu, Konishi Yukinaga), and communities of hidden Kirishitan remained thick.

The double pressure of economic distress and religious repression made this region the point of eruption.

Shirō had been believed by the Kirishitan community from childhood to be the 'return of the Savior.

' His father Masuda Jinbei was a former Konishi Yukinaga retainer and a fervent Kirishitan; Shirō himself was said from childhood to work strange miracles.

At the outbreak of the uprising, the background to Shirō being raised up as commander-in-chief despite his youth of around sixteen lay in this religious expectation.

Not political leadership but Shirō as religious charisma became the spiritual core of the 37,000 uprising force.

For the entire four months of siege war that followed, Shirō would continue to hold this position as the 'Savior.