Season 11, Episode 3: The Shimabara Rebellion

With the death of Toyotomi Hideyori and the practical elimination of the Toyotomi Clan, the Tokugawa Shogunate had removed the final obstacle to absolute power. However, calling the Toyotomi an obstacle may be a bit of an overstatement. Although the name Hideyoshi was still respected among the daimyo nationwide, he had been dead since 1598. Any business which they needed to conduct through their national government had been routed through the new shogunate for the previous fourteen years before the Siege of Osaka. For nearly a decade and a half, Tokugawa Ieyasu had replaced Toyotomi Hideyoshi as the main person which most daimyo went to great pains to ensure never thought of them as his enemy. What the Toyotomi represented to Ieyasu was a future possibility of a larger civil war, which was why he went to great lengths to find a just cause against them. If there was one area where Tokugawa Ieyasu excelled in his later life, it was starting fights he was certain to win.

As for the ronin who had answered Hideyori’s call to arms, those who fled were methodically hunted down by Bakufu agents after the siege of Osaka and executed for their so-called treason. Many of the ronin in the Toyotomi Clan’s employ died at the siege itself or in one of the outlying battles. According to one account, their heads were placed on stakes which lined a certain highway in Kansai. It is said that that particular stretch of road had a continuous line of severed heads displayed from Osaka all the way to Fushimi.

Although many ronin had lost their lives in the defense of Osaka Castle, the problems that arose from the existence of ronin were far from over. The Tokugawa Shogunate would debate endlessly over what to do with the masterless warriors who embodied their worst fear: the potential of a rising military power within Japan that lay outside of their control. However, the immediate concerns of the Bakufu during their initial years of operation were more focused on cementing their power, providing a means of law and order, and preventing the Tozama daimyo from being able to consolidate significant power capable enough to oppose them.

While the shogunate would eventually evolve bureaucracies and mechanisms for maintaining law and order, the government of the retired shogun Ieyasu himself was still in its early phases of development toward the end of his life. After the destruction of the Toyotomi, he promulgated the Buke Shohatto, or Laws for Military Houses followed by the Kuge Shohatto, or Laws for Nobility. We discussed these briefly in the first episode this season, but it’s important to note that they were the product of scholarly councils and did not spring fully-formed from the mind of Ieyasu. Within those laws were laid the foundations of future stability of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Ieyasu died at the age of 73 in the summer of 1616. He left behind not only the foundation of a strong central samurai government, but also a book of precepts which were passed on to his descendants and eagerly pored over by future generations. As a historical subject, he remains a fascination as the founder of by far the most stable shogunal government in all of Japanese history. While capable of immense cruelty in the name of expedience, he was also a man of culture and commerce.

Although he did not form the machinery which would provide greater stability for his descendants, he did develop an extensive network of personal agents from various social strata who enforced his edicts, executed his policies, and acted as his hands and feet in their various spheres of influence. Some were monks, some were scholars, and some of the most important of such deputies were merchants. Chroniclers during his time commented that he ran the nation as though the entire country was a village and he was its chief. Upon his death, his son Tokugawa Hidetada took up the mantle of leadership and continued in his office of shogun, albeit one without an ogosho to oversee his affairs.

Father and son had endured a strained relationship with one another, which was said to have been permanently damaged when Hidetada failed to show up to Sekigahara until after the battle had ended. Nevertheless, Ieyasu still kept his eldest son in place as his heir in spite of his general disapproval of his son. You may recall that Ieyasu had previously ordered his eldest son with a previous wife to commit seppuku, so it’s worth considering that perhaps the first Tokugawa shogun was not exactly the best father.

One of the first maneuvers of newly-empowered shogun Hidetada was to reiterate the relative positions and responsibilities of the shogunate vis-a-vis the imperial court and vice versa. This was probably meant, in part, as a warning for the nobility not to engage in intrigues against the shogunate now that Ieyasu was gone. Hidetada took further measures to bring the imperial court more fully under the Bakufu’s purview in 1620, when he arranged for the Emperor to marry his youngest daughter Kazuko. As a sort of bridal gift, he assigned military aides to protect the person of the emperor and any retired sovereigns, though in reality these were Bakufu spies who kept close watch on the nobility for any sign of rebellion. With the Toyotomi Clan gone, the only real threat to the Edo Shogunate was a resurgent imperial court, so these measures seem eminently sensible for the new shogun.

The next pressing issue was the business of organizing the Tokugawa family. It was decided that the three next-eldest sons of Ieyasu would be recognized as the primary Tokugawa members and their families referred to as the Go-Sanke, or the Three Houses. Their domains spanned Owari, Kii, and Mino Provinces respectively. Younger sons of Ieyasu were acknowledged as Go-Kamon, or Kinsmen, and required to use the old family name Matsudaira. At least one of Hidetada’s sons and his respective descendents were also classified as Go-Kamon, and the issue of who was Tokugawa and who was Matsudaira would continue to be decided by the Bakufu and sitting shogun in the future.

In 1623, Hidetada retired, becoming the second Ogosho, or retired shogun. His son Tokugawa Iemitsu took the office of shogun in his stead, though naturally Hidetada would continue managing affairs broadly as the retired shogun. Iemitsu had been the official heir since 1617, and likely knew long before then that he would one day inherit the office of shogun. He was unfortunate, however, to have developed an overly-bitter sibling rivalry with his younger brother Tadanaga. This younger brother had been a favorite of their parents, and was made daimyo of Kofu Domain, which spanned Totomi, Suruga, and Kai Provinces and was valued at a little over half a million koku per annum.

Iemitsu also practiced shudo, or homosexuality, but his love life revealed a potentially volatile nature. In 1620, he fell into an argument with one of his lovers while they were bathing together and Iemitsu killed him there in the bath. 1620 was also the year that Iemitsu’s sister, Tokugawa Kazuko, was married to the sovereign, Emperor Go-Mizunoo.

In 1626, his third year as shogun, Iemitsu and his father Hidetada traveled to Kyoto as a show of respect for the emperor and to meet with Empress Kazuko, who was caring for a two-year old daughter named Princess Meisho. As part of their show of respect, the shogun and ogosho bestowed lavish gifts upon the sovereign and the nobles at court, mostly gold and other valuables. Again, keeping in the court’s good graces was one way of hopefully ensuring that ambitious enemies would not use the Tenno as a means of overthrowing the Tokugawa. Later that year, however, relations between the Bakufu and the court would take a turn for the worst.

You may recall that the Kuge Shohatto specifically forbade the emperor from giving gifts of purple robes to monastic leaders. A purple robe signified an official recognition of the practitioner’s virtue, and it is likely that the Bakufu wanted to establish more separation between the Daijo-daikan and the religious orders, who were also potential sources of unrest and rebellion. In 1626, Emperor Go-mizunoo gave permission for ten monks from two monasteries - Daitokuji and Myoshinji - to wear purple robes.

To understand Go-mizunoo-Tenno’s motivations as best we can, it is helpful to understand the disposition of the imperial court in the early Edo Period. First, we should note that the custom of Emperors retiring and then living as retired emperors as their successors took the throne as Tenno had been halted during Sengoku Jidai. When Emperor Go-Hanazono abdicated in 1464, he would be the last sovereign to retire until the Edo Period. Every Emperor who followed Go-Hanazono held their office until they died until Emperor Go-Yozei, who abdicated in 1611. During the Azuchi-Momoyama Period, the Imperial Court had recovered much of its former luster as it was patronized by Oda Nobunaga and especially by his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi. As the nation gradually leaned into peace and stability, some members of the court pondered the possibility of a return to direct imperial rule.

As the Bakufu developed throughout the early 1600s, however, it became clear that the new shogunate did not share the court’s opinion that the emperor should govern as well as reign. Like Ashikaga Takauji before him, Tokugawa Ieyasu believed that the sovereign’s primary duties revolved around maintaining a proper relationship between the nation and the heavenly powers and that it was the Bakufu’s duty to deal with day-to-day matters like tax collection, law enforcement, and foreign policy on the sovereign’s behalf and in his best interests.

There was one particularly sticky issue over which both sides felt they had a more pressing interest: the issue of imperial succession. Naturally the sovereign wanted to select their own candidate as rightful heir and naturally the shogunate wanted a Tenno on the throne who owed his position, and whatever power came with it, to the Bakufu. Emperor Go-Yozei became increasingly frustrated with the shogunate’s interference in his own succession, as he wanted to be succeeded by his younger brother while the Bakufu’s preferred candidate was his own third son. In 1611, unable to practically resist the shogunate’s designs, Emperor Go-Yozei abdicated, being the first sovereign to retire since 1464. His third son, the 15-year-old Crown Prince Kotohito became the new Tenno and is remembered as Emperor Go-Mizunoo. This is the emperor who married Tokugawa Kazuko, the daughter of Hidetada and sister of Iemitsu, and who gave permission for certain monks to wear purple robes.

It is possible that Go-Mizunoo intended, by this flagrant violation of the Kuge Shohatto, to test the willingness of the Bakufu to enforce laws which bound the sovereign. If this was his intention, he soon learned that the new shogunate was absolutely unwilling to look the other way. They quickly issued an edict countermanding the sovereign’s proclamation and the office of the Shoshidai, the shogun’s deputy in Kyoto, opened an investigation into the incident. This led to protests from the monasteries in question, whose leaders were blamed for inciting the entire incident and sentenced to exile in Tohoku once the investigation and subsequent trial were complete.

The Purple Robe Incident, as it was later known, was not the only time that Iemitsu and Hidetada ran afoul of religious authorities. Both are credited with pursuing anti-Christian policies nationwide, increasing the already existing stigmas and persecutions against Roman Catholic Japanese. Christian daimyo who were still practicing their faith were pressured to reverse course, and pretty much all of them abandoned their supposed new faith and rededicated themselves to Buddhism, Indigenous Worship, and their worldly duties.

As for Emperor Go-Mizunoo, the abject public failure of his designs to stand up to the shogunate resulted in nothing but embarrassment and humiliation. When the sentences against the instigators of the Purple Robe Incident were announced, he made an announcement of his own-- that he would be abdicating in favor of a most surprising successor. His five-year-old daughter, whose mother was Tokugawa Kazuko, was chosen to become the reigning monarch, giving Japan its first female sovereign since the reign of Empress Shotoku back in 770.

What this effectively meant for the burgeoning shogunate was an end to the imperial troubles of Go-Mizunoo-Tenno and the beginning of a very favorable relationship with the throne. After all, the new sovereign was the granddaughter of the retired shogun and the niece of the sitting shogun. It also helped that she was still a child, leaving no doubt as to whether the Bakufu or Daijo-daikan was truly in control of the nation.

In 1632, retired shogun Tokugawa Hidetada died, leaving Iemitsu in sole command of the shogunate. He was supported by critical retainers who held high positions and controlled a lot of influence, but it seems he still felt a lingering insecurity about his position as shogun. Soon after his father’s death, he accused his brother Tadanaga of being mentally unsound and ordered him stripped of his offices and possessions. In 1633, despairing of ever earning back his brother’s favor, Tokugawa Tadanaga committed seppuku.

It was under Iemitsu’s direct rule as shogun that Edo Period Japan would adopt some of its most notable and familiar characteristics. Like Hidetada before him, he leaned heavily into anti-foreigner sentiment to bolster his control over the nation, and it was during his reign that Japan began to adopt the policy of Sakoku, which means “locked country.” While shades of this policy had already taken shape - particularly the persecution of Christianity - Iemitsu would gradually define it in more serious and absolute terms. We will discuss it further in the next episode.

It is possible that these policies may have eventually been overturned organically by future shoguns, and that even Christianity or other “foreign” religions allowed to flourish once more, if not for the incident for which this episode is named. While foreign influence would later be blamed as a blanket motivating factor behind the Shimabara Rebellion, the actual causes are multi-faceted.

The Shimabara Domain occupied much of Hizen Province, which is located on the northwestern corner of Kyushu. Most of this particular domain had previously been under the purview of the Arima Clan, whose leadership had converted to Christianity and were serious practitioners of their religion. They were caught up in the fallout from the Okamoto Daihachi Incident which we discussed in episode one of this season, and were thus dispossessed of Shimabara Domain in 1614 and sent to Nobeoka Domain on eastern Kyushu. In their place, the shogunate appointed the Matsukura Clan who, in their eagerness to express their appreciation of their new appointment, engaged whole-heartedly in suppressing Christianity within their domain. They tortured Christian believers, and executed those who refused to abandon their faith.

In addition to their state-sanctioned abuse of their Christian subjects, the Matsukura Clan entertained grand ambitions as a major player in Edo Period Japan. They assisted with construction projects in Edo, including refurbishing parts of Edo Castle, and this earned them much goodwill from the Bakufu, who gave them permission to build a new fortress in Shimabara, which would be called Shimabara Castle. To fund this endeavor, taxes were increased across the domain and collected with a renewed enthusiasm.

While casting Christianity as a wicked foreign cult was easy enough to accomplish throughout Honshu and Shikoku, such fear-mongering was not as easily accomplished in distant Kyushu. The first Christian missionaries who came to Japan arrived in Kyushu in the mid-1500s and the concentration of Roman Catholic believers in Japan was heavily concentrated on the western island. By the 1630s, it’s not unreasonable to posit that even the non-Christian residents of Kyushu had some contact with Christian neighbors, and it probably wasn’t hard to locate very old Christians on the island. While some turned away from the faith in the face of persecution and political demagoguery, many probably just kept their faith to themselves in hopes that the government on Honshu would mind its own business and leave them be, something which previous central governments on Honshu had been only too happy to do.

A combination of Christian persecution and punitive taxation created large numbers of discontented peasants in Shimabara domain. However, such unhappy peasants had little recourse against a government who, in addition to possessing a practical monopoly on violence, also had a monopoly on weapons. Hideyoshi’s practice of sword-hunting and confiscating weapons from the peasantry had been repeated a few times and had effectively disarmed most commoners throughout the nation. However, on the nearby Amakusa islands, another group of residents were becoming disillusioned and resentful of oppressive overlords. This particular group were dispossessed samurai, ronin. The shogunate was always fearful of what might happen if ronin organized and used their battlefield expertise against the government. They were about to find out just how ugly and costly their nightmare scenario could become.

Representatives of the discontented peasants of Shimabara began meeting in secret with the leaders of the unhappy ronin of the Amakusa Islands and in late 1637 they arranged the assassination of a local administrator and launched a rebellion. Many of the ronin were also Christians, and several descended from former retainers of the late Konishi Yukinaga, famed Christian daimyo who was executed after Sekigahara. The active rebels recruited-slash-coerced their fellow residents into joining their uprising.

After several failed attempts to seize castles in Shimabara and Amakusa, the rebels took up residence at the ruins of Hara Castle, the former seat of the recently-departed Arima Clan. They set to work rebuilding the fortification, raising palisades and using what supplies they had managed to seize from storehouses belonging to the Matsukura Clan to harden their position.

The shogunate reacted quickly, naming Itakura Shigemasa as leader of the official Bakufu army expedition to Kyushu. Shigemasa was a younger son of the Kyoto Shoshidai, the shogun’s deputy in the capital, and during the winter portion of the siege of Osaka, he had served as a negotiator representing the Tokugawa Clan. However, it seems unlikely that the shogunate was interested in negotiating with the rebels-- Itakura Shigemasa’s task was to crush them quickly and bring a swift end to this conflict.

The daimyo of northern Kyushu soon brought troops to bear against the rebels and put them under Shigemasa’s command. Among the besieging force was a samurai whom we will discuss in greater detail in a bonus episode later this season, though some of you might know his name already. It was famed swordsman and duelist Miyamoto Musashi. However, being part of the punitive force was not what it used to be. The ronin who had rebuilt Hara fortress were defending it with great cleverness and ingenuity, and repeated attempts by the attackers to seize it by all-out assault were all repelled.

The commanders of the assault turned to an interesting ally whom they hoped would help them bring this conflict to a swift end: the Dutch. Having built a factory in Hirado which manufactured cannons and gunpowder, the official representative of the Dutch East India Trading Company, one Nicolaes Couckebacker, was approached about sending not only cannons to the besiegers, but also to bombard the Hara fortress from the sea with his ship, named de Ryp, which somewhat anticlimactically means “The Rip.” Couckebacker brought his vessel to bear against the fortress, reportedly firing upon it for fifteen days at an average rate of once per hour. Cannons of that size, however, were still no match for stone walls, and the defenders continued to hold the castle quite comfortably.

Toward the end of the fifteen days of bombardment, the defenders sent a message to their shogunate opponents which reportedly shamed the Bakufu for requesting the assistance of foreigners to deal with their relatively small-scale rebellion. The Dutch were thanked for their service and dismissed, and the matter once more placed solely in the hands of Itakura Shigemasa, who did not seem to know exactly how to resolve this rebellion. Supposedly, he hired ninja to sneak into the fortress, who were discovered and killed or chased away. Next he resorted to assigning sappers to tunnel under the walls, but the necessary excavation took too much time. He reportedly built crude siege weapons like catapults as well, but still the defenders not only continued to stalwartly defend the fortress, but even made occasional sorties and night ambushes which caused great casualties among the assaulting force.

After several months, the shogunate grew impatient with Shigemasa’s lack of progress. They informed him that they had named a new commander for his punitive expedition, and that he was ordered to relinquish his command as soon as his replacement arrived. No doubt feeling pressured to resolve this matter, he tried to organize a sudden night attack which would surprise and overwhelm the defenders. As the attack was underway, however, he was killed by a well-aimed arrow and his troops forced into a hasty retreat.

The new commander who arrived to replace the now-late Itakura Shigemasa was a man named Matsudaira Nobutsuna, a longtime shogunate official who served as a hatamoto and later as a roju. In early spring of 1638, the rebel forces, which numbered around 27,000, attempted an attack against their besiegers. However, by this point said besiegers numbered well over a hundred thousand. The attack was ultimately driven back and a few weeks later, the fortress finally fell after a concerted assault. By this point, the defenders had run out of gunpowder and other critical supplies, which made their defeat relatively inevitable.

The shogunate was merciless in their pursuit of the rebels. An estimated 37,000 were beheaded, which included both active rebels and those suspected of rebel sympathies. Amakusa Shiro, a charismatic teenager who was one of the rebellion’s primary leaders, was killed and his head displayed at Nagasaki. What remained of the rebuilt Hara Castle was put to the torch, and the bodies of those who had fought against the shogunate were burned inside of it.

The Shimabara Rebellion was ultimately defeated, but the lengths to which the Bakufu had been forced to go are certainly notable. While the casualties on the losing rebel side were close to forty thousand, the deaths on the shogunate side were over twenty thousand-- a terrible outcome for what was supposed to be the central military government of the nation. In his work, “A History of Japan, 1615-1867,” George Sansom is particularly withering in his critique of the prosecution of this Shimabara Rebellion, writing (quote), “Their failure to achieve an easy victory seems to indicate a decline in the military spirit during the two decades after the siege of Osaka.” (end quote)

Although the Shimabara Rebellion exposed weakness in the shogunate’s ability to prosecute war against its enemies, it would mark the final large-scale uprising against the Bakufu of the Edo Period. There would be other occasional peasant uprisings and even a few intrigues of powerful clans, but nothing would come close to the bloodshed at Shimabara until the close of the Edo Period. Next time, we will explore in greater detail the fallout of the Shimabara Rebellion, as well as the shogunate’s response and assignment of blame.