About Nagasaki
UNESCO World Heritage Sites
There are two registered UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Nagasaki Prefecture：
1. Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution (listed in 2015)
2. The Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region (listed in 2018)
∗ Please contact the "Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region Information Centre" before you visit the churches listed for UNESCO World Heritage.
Oura Cathedral is the only exception, in which you do not need prior notice.
Nagasaki New Christian Journey
On July 1 2018 the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region were inscribed on the World Heritage List by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and just as this title indicates became celebrated as part of the heritage of the world. This cultural heritage is composed of the Oura Cathedral, which was built after the opening up to the West of Japan in 1854, as well as all the earlier small villages where the Christian faith was handed down secretly during the era of the hidden Christians’ concealment. The surviving churches themselves are buildings that date from between the end of the shogunate and the Meiji era onwards, and while they are comparatively new among the World Heritage if the villages are added they include sites that remained hidden for some 250 years.
In this special feature, while interweaving a variety of stories we will provide an introduction to Christian history in Nagasaki.
Recognized as assets that should be protected by the world, we will unravel their value and meaning.
The state of the hidden Christians’ villages and their distinctive religious system
Missionary work and flourishment, martyrdom and hiding
The early Christian era in Japan can be broadly divided into three stages .
The missionaries who had obtained knowledge of astronomy and could appropriately treat illnesses and injuries made no demands for donations, instead teaching an ethos and life of helping one’s neighbors. Despite their lack of fluency in Japanese the teachings of the missionaries were easily understood, penetrated deeply into people’s hearts, and eventually Christianity spread throughout the entire prefecture of Nagasaki.
However, the missionaries were deported from Japan and became absent from the country.
From 1644 onwards, how did the remaining Japanese Christians live while retaining their ardent faith? Succession, sacred places, objects of faith – here we will explore the 250 years or more of the period of hiding.
Oura Cathedral, dedicated to the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan, and the discovery of the Hidden Christians
During the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate and the early Meiji era beginning in 1867, the Christian missionaries who arrived in Japan worked with a vigor of unrivaled passion and managed to pass the baton on to their successors in a splendid manner. The bright light of hope fell upon their descendants in Nagasaki, a place filled with the history of the Hidden Christians who had overcome such a long and harsh period of suffering. And this all started with the completion of Oura Cathedral, the Basilica of the Twenty-Six Holy Martyrs of Japan.
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Hidden Christians the missionaries encountered and their revival
What was necessary in order to retrain the descendants of the Christians left in Japan with the correct doctrine? The business of printing catechetical books and so on, the fostering of Japanese priests, deepening of faith, and production of Japanese language hymns to bind together the community of the faithful in one heart. After the Discovery of the Hidden Christians, how did the missionaries act upon the instant that the faith passed down through the ancestors of the Hidden Christians changed? In this part we follow the missionaries as they unceasingly exerted their efforts on behalf of the faithful when they recommenced their work in Japan.
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The Monumental Achievements of the Meiji Missionaries and Nagasaki’s Churches
From the middle of the Meiji era, the 1880s onwards, churches were built in swift succession both within and outside of Nagasaki Prefecture. The construction of these churches, each a House of God, was the fervent wish of all the Japanese faithful who had finally gained freedom of belief and returned to Catholicism. Behind this was their strong ambition to put their thoughts into something solid, the zeal of the foreign missionaries who made a reality of this, and the Japanese master carpenters who in that same spirit exerted their energies to build these churches.
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