Hizen Province

It did not include the island provinces (now municipalities) of Tsushima and Iki that are now part of modern Nagasaki Prefecture.

During the late Muromachi period, the province was the site of much early contact between Japan and Portuguese and Spanish merchants and missionaries.

Hirado, and later Nagasaki became major foreign trade centers, and a large percentage of the population converted to Roman Catholicism.

During the Edo period, Hizen Province was divided among several daimyōs, but dominated by the Nabeshima clan, whose domain was centered at the castle town of Saga.

At the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, Hizen was divided between the following han: During this period, the port of Nagasaki remained a tenryō territory, administered for the Tokugawa government by the Nagasaki bugyō, and contained the Dutch East India Company trading post of Dejima.