Kushima Castle was the ancestral home of the Ōmura clan, having first been constructed in the Kamakura period by descendants of Fujiwara no Sumitomo.

It was the base of Kirishitan daimyō Ōmura Yoshiaki (1568–1615), who assisted Toyotomi Hideyoshi in securing control of Kyūshū.

After Hideyoshi’s death and the Battle of Sekigahara, the Ōmura clan was confirmed by shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu as a tozama han with revenues of 27,000 koku in their ancestral territories.

The Ōmura daimyō remained in residence at Kushima Castle until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

In 1884, a Shinto shrine was erected on the foundations of the former keep, in honor of the spirits of the generations of Ōmura daimyō.