UNESCO has decided to add 12 sites to the World Heritage list that are linked to the history of the country’s persecuted Christians.
The sites include the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving church in the country which is already designated as a national treasure; and the remains of Hara Castle, a site of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion that led to establishment of a national policy of seclusion and the beginning of the hidden Christians’ unique system to transmit their faith and beliefs by themselves.
The newly added sites “bear unique testimony to a cultural tradition nurtured by hidden Christians in the Nagasaki region who secretly transmitted their faith during the period of prohibition from the 17th to the 19th century,” the committee said on its website.
Hara Castle is the site of a revolt against the domain ruler’s persecution of Christianity in 1637-38. The insurgent troops used the castle as a base in their fight against the Shogunate army. The 37,000 rebels, including noncombatants of women and children, were annihilated by an all-out assault of 120,000 soldiers at the end of February, 1638.