Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region
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How it came to be
Christianity reached Japan in 1549, when the Jesuit Francis Xavier landed at Kagoshima. Persecution later grew under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. In the Shimabara Rebellion, from December 1637 to April 1638, rebels led by Amakusa Shirō held out in Hara Castle, and after it fell about 37,000 rebels and sympathisers were executed.
After the rebellion the shogunate enforced the ban on Christianity even more strictly. With no missionaries left, Christians kept their faith in secret in small seaside and island villages around Nagasaki and Amakusa. The villages of Shitsu, Ōno, Kasuga and Sakitsu formed in the 17th century, early in the ban, while those on Kuroshima, Nozaki, Kashiragashima, Hisaka and Naru were settled by migrating Hidden Christians from the 18th century on.
In 1864 Ōura Cathedral was completed to a design by the French missionaries Bernard Petitjean and Louis Furet. On 17 March 1865 people from Urakami told Father Petitjean that they were Catholics, and the existence of the Hidden Christians became known. The ban was lifted in 1873. Japan withdrew its first nomination in 2016 after ICOMOS comments, refocused it on the years of the ban, and the 12 components were inscribed on 30 June 2018.
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