Battle Of Hondo Castle
The Battle of Hondo Castle (December 29, 1637) was a victory for the rebel peasants and ronin during the Shimabara Rebellion. After a successful uprising in Shimabara Domain, several thousand rebels crossed the sea to the nearby Amakusa Islands, domain of the Terazawa family, to help the local Christians who rose to arms at the same time. The local Terazawa samurai, overconfident and believing they had to deal only with their own peasants, attacked the rebels on the open field and suffered terrible loses. The surviving Terazawa soldiers took refuge in Tomioka Castle, which was attacked within a few days. Prelude In the end of November 1637, a combination of several poor harvests, violent collection of arbitrarily doubled taxes and persecution of Christianity (which existed in Kyushu since 1549, but was outlawed in 1614) among local peasants led to violent uprising of starving peasants, Christians, and ronin in the Shimabara Domain, property of the Matsukura family. The r ...
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Shimabara Rebellion
The , also known as the or , was an uprising that occurred in the Shimabara Domain of the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan from 17 December 1637 to 15 April 1638. Matsukura Katsuie, the ''daimyō'' of the Shimabara Domain, enforced unpopular policies set by his father Matsukura Shigemasa that drastically raised taxes to construct the new Shimabara Castle and violently prohibited Christianity. In December 1637, an alliance of local ''rōnin'' and mostly Catholic peasants led by Amakusa Shirō rebelled against the Tokugawa shogunate due to discontent over Katsuie's policies. The Tokugawa Shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops supported by the Dutch to suppress the rebels and defeated them after a lengthy siege against their stronghold at Hara Castle in Minamishimabara. Following the successful suppression of the rebellion, Shirō and an estimated 37,000 rebels and sympathizers were executed by beheading, and the Portuguese traders suspected of helping them were expelled fr ...
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