is a castle in Hizen Province

Hizen Province

was an old province of Japan in the area of Saga and Nagasaki prefectures. It was sometimes called , with Higo Province. Hizen bordered on the provinces of Chikuzen and Chikugo. The province was included in Saikaidō...

. During the Shimabara Rebellion

Shimabara Rebellion

The was an uprising largely involving Japanese peasants, most of them Catholic Christians, in 1637–1638 during the Edo period.It was one of only a handful of instances of serious unrest during the relatively peaceful period of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule...

(1637–1638), the rebellious peasants were besieged there.

As a result of the Shimabara Rebellion in 1637, the Shogunate decided to expel the Portuguese from Japan. The Dutch, meanwhile, gained the trust of the Japanese authorities by bombarding Hara Castle (where Japanese insurgents took refuge during the Shimabara Rebellion) and thus gained a monopoly on European trade with Japan.