Amakusa Shirō
leader of the Shimabara Rebellion
Masuda Shirō Tokisada (益田 四郎 時貞; c. 1621 – 28 February 1638), also known as Amakusa Shirō (天草 四郎), was a Japanese Christian of the Edo period and leader of the Shimabara Rebellion, an uprising of Japanese Roman Catholics against the Shogunate. His Christian name was Geronimo and he was later known as Francisco.
The uprising led by Shirō was defeated, and he was executed at the age of 17. His head was displayed on a pike near Nagasaki as a warning to Christians. His efforts as the spiritual leader of the uprising, and the inevitable defeat of the Christian rebels at Hara Castle, were reflected in the 1962 movie Amakusa Shirō Tokisada (shown in English-speaking countries as The Christian Revolt or The Revolutionary), by the Japanese movie director Nagisa Oshima.
Early life
Shirō was born in 1621 as the son of Catholic parents, Masuda Jinbei (益田 甚兵衛), a former Konishi clan retainer, and his wife. Legend speculates that Shirō could have been the illegitimate son of Toyotomi Hideyori, but these claims have little credibility.
Portuguese Jesuit missionaries had been active in Japan since the late 16th century. By the age of 15, the charismatic youth was known to his Japanese Catholic followers as "Heaven's messenger". Miraculous powers were attributed to him.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Amakusa Shirō” as leader of the Shimabara Rebellion. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q452628. VIAF identifies the subject as 60525239. The Library of Congress control number is n85206965. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1621, 1638 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amakusa Shirō” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.