What kind of island is Shodoshima?
History, Osaka Castle, Pilgrimage & Traditions

Shodoshima
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History

• Azukijima

  It is not clear when the name Shodoshima first came into use. Its earliest written appearance is in Japan's oldest chronicle, the Kojiki. In its island-creation myth, the deities Izanagi and Izanami give birth to Azukijima, also called Onudehime, as the tenth island following the great islands of Japan. The Nihon Shoki also records Emperor Ojin looking across the Seto Inland Sea from a hill as he saw Empress Ehime's ship leave Naniwa for her home province of Kibi. His verse mentions Awajishima and Azukijima. The pronunciation Shodoshima is said to have become established around the middle of the Kamakura period.

• Sasaki Nobutane

  During the Northern and Southern Courts period after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate, Sasaki Saburozaemon Nobutane established a base at Hoshigajo on Shodoshima in 1339. Originally a brave commander who joined Hosokawa Jozen's Northern Court attack on Kyoto, he switched to the Southern Court after taking Osai no Tsubone from Ko no Moroaki, a powerful retainer of Ashikaga Takauji. Nobutane came from Kojima across the sea, where his family was prominent among maritime forces. By joining the pro-Southern Court Kumano naval forces, with their ties to mountain asceticism, he sought to control eastern Seto Inland Sea shipping and block the route from western Japan to Kyoto. Eight years later, in 1347, the Northern Court commander Morouji, Governor of Awaji, attacked with a large army from Awa, Awaji, Sanuki and Bizen. Nobutane surrendered after a month of fighting.

• Christianity and migration to Shimabara

  Christianity reached Shodoshima in 1586. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had granted the island to the Christian lord Konishi Yukinaga in 1585. The following year, Yukinaga invited Gregorio de Cespedes from a seminary in Osaka to preach here. Accounts say that although there had been no Christians on the island, more than 1,400 people converted in under a month, a cross over 15 meters high was erected, Buddhist and Shinto objects were destroyed, and Yukinaga funded a church.
  In 1587, Hideyoshi's ban on Christianity ordered missionaries to leave Japan, and by around 1630 the faith had been almost eradicated. Some hidden Christians are thought to have survived despite the persecution. In 1637, believers in Shimabara, Kyushu, rebelled against severe repression. Many peasants died in the Shimabara Rebellion, leaving the southern peninsula devastated. To rebuild it, the shogunate resettled farming families from across Japan, including its directly controlled territory of Shodoshima. This became known as the migration to Shimabara.