The flame of a revolutionary movement, one striving for "liberty and equality", was first lit in 1630 in the Amakusa area of Kumamoto prefecture.
Amakusa Shiro's Fight Began In The Era Of Long-Distance Navigation, When East-West Contact First Brought Ideas Of Liberty And Equality to Japan
The second through fifth bridges (Oyanobashi, Nakanobashi, Maejimabashi, Matsushimabashi) join Oyano with Matsushima on Amakusa Upper Island, and the road which spans them is well known as the Amakusa Pearl Line.
Amakusa, located in a southwestern part of Kumamoto, consists of Shimo-jima and Kami-shima Islands, which are major islands in the area, and 120 other islands varied in size, which belong to Unzen-Amakusa National Park along with the Shimabara-hanto Peninsula in Nagasaki.
Kumamoto has two national parks, namely the Aso and Unzen-Amakusa, and two quasi-national parks, namely the Mt. Yabahita-hiko-san and the Kyushu Central Mountains.
Kumamoto is situated at the center of Kyushu Island in the western end of Japan.
The name Shinto is the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese Kami no michi, "Way of the Superior Beings," the word kami (Chinese shin), although employed by Christians as the name for God, being used of super natural beings--whether good or evil--of the spirits of departed heroes, and even of extraordinary natural objects.
In its present form it has no system of dogmas, no prescribed code of morals, and no sacred writings unless a few semi-historical books and some forms of addresses to the kami can be considered such.
According to the Kojiki, after heaven and earth were separated from the original chaos, three kami came into existence on the Heavenly Plain and afterward passed away.
But after they failed to take Kumamoto Castle, and surrendered to Government forces in Joozan, Kagoshima Prefecture in September of that same year, Saigo committed seppuku (ritual suicide).
Massing a force of some 15,000, they chose Saigo as their leader, and in February, 1877, marched in armed revolt, in what became known as the Seinan War, the last and largest of the samurai revolts against the Meiji Government.
The following books were of great help to us in preparing these notes.
In Kumamoto there was an English school that had been established at the time of the Restoration by the former daimyo Hosokawa, where a dedicated and religious retired American soldier by the name of Janes was now teaching.
I am wounded. It went the rounds in the capital causing a great deal of hilarity, and inspiring the line: What will you do now? The rebellion in Kumamoto left a large number of people dead or wounded and, left alone in Tokyo, I was quite concerned abut the fate of my family.
Unlike today, the trip from Nagasaki to Kumamoto was not an easy one at that time.
Keiko Uemura, Sumie Sakaki and Yasuo Yoshioka: Factors of utterance politeness and individual differences: from research on honorific behavior at Takahama-Miyanomae, Amakusa Town, Kumamoto Prefecture
Ayako Ichimori: Change and standardization of dialectal words in the Nagao District of Shiranui Town, Kumamoto Prefecture: a report of an "all-residents" survey in four communities
Kenji Takahashi: Differences according to area and age in dialects between Matsuyama City and Koochi City: the processes, methods of analysis and results of glottogram research