Minamishimabara · JP

Ōte-guchi Main Gate Site of Hara Castle

The Ōte-guchi (大手口, "main gate") site marks the formal entrance to Hara Castle, set on a coastal bluff jutting into the Ariake Sea in Minamishimabara, on Nagasaki's Shimabara Peninsula. It was here, in the outermost Sannomaru enclosure, that the brutal 1637–38 Shimabara Rebellion opened with its first fierce fighting—and, after the rebellion was crushed, where the heads of its leaders were paraded. Today the gate survives as an archaeological ground-level site rather than a standing structure, integrated into the Hara Castle ruins, a National Historic Site and a component of the UNESCO-listed Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki and Amakusa region. Walking the ruins, the main gate is your entry point into the story of a Christian lord's fortress and the doomed uprising of some 20,000 peasants and ronin who held out against a much larger shogunal army.