The Extermination of Monastic Militancy and the Defeat of the Shimabara Uprising

Adolphson observes that the monastic armies of Enryaku-ji, Kofuku-ji and Negoro outlasted the Kamakura and Muromachi periods combined (1165­1573). In other words, they were more or less active over 400 years.

In his attempts to unite the country under a central government, the warlord Oda Nobunaga crushed the monk warriors of Enryaku-ji in 1571 and burned down the whole Tendai monastic complex. In the same endea­vour to appease the country and to earn more taxes he also destroyed the Hongan-ji castle in the Ishiyama War of 1580. In 1585 Nobunaga's successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1536-98) defeated the last Buddhist military stronghold in Negoro, the Shingon monastic complex.

Another revolt occurred in 1637-8, in which many Christians participated. European missionaries had proselytised quite successfully in Japan since 1549. However, they eventually came into conflict with state authorities. Because of the possible threats of Portuguese military involvement and of Japanese Christian daimyo becoming disloyal to the national cause, the warlord Hideyoshi and his successor Tokugawa leyasu persecuted Christianity at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Owing to this oppression, in the southern island of Kyushu many peasants suffered from hunger and eventually staged an ikki under a young Christian leader.^[760] There were many Christians among the insurgents. Nevertheless, this ikki cannot be called a ‘Christian revolt' because many non-Christians participated who equally suffered from malnutrition. The centre of the rebellion became Shimabara castle in the south. With the help of the Protestant Dutch, the rivals of the Catholic Portuguese traders, the rebellion was crushed and Japanese troops killed the insurgents without mercy. Subsequently, Christianity was prohib­ited until 1873, the country was closed to the outside world from 1639 until 1854, and strictly controlled Dutch trade replaced the Portuguese trade in Nagasaki. During the Tokugawa period (1603-1867), civil wars did not hap­pen, although 2,719 peasant uprisings occurred between 1590 and 1867.^[761]