| For those that would find the history of the interaction between Japan and the west interesting I would recommend Nagasaki, but those who don't want to see such things should probably go elsewhere. Although it is not well known among westerners, this city grew in importance as the only port in Japan that was allowed to trade with the west. Dejima Island was first the Portuguese trading colony but later became the Dutch port, now only a model of the island remains. |
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| As a point of contact with the west it was also the point from which Christianity began to spread around Japan, and as a result there has traditionally been a large Christian community in the Nagasaki area. This status brought great hardship on the people when the government decided to ban Christianity and subsequently executed or imprisoned large numbers of Nagasaki Christians, the most famous event of which was the crucifiction of 26 prominent Christians, they later received sainthood and now there is a monument to them. | ||||||||
| With the ban the government decided to expel the Catholic Portuguese who traded in Nagasaki at the time and instead replaced them with Protestant Dutch who were thought less likely to try and spread their religion. When Japan opened up to the outside world about 100 years ago the "Hidden Christians" who had been in hiding for hundreds of years emerged and built the largest cathedral in the Orient. |
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When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki
20 years later the cathedral was only 500 yards from the hypocenter and was
completely destroyed, while many of the Christians who had just emerged from
hiding were also killed.
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After the war many of the foreigner's houses were collected and put on
display in the Dutch Slopes area of the city, this fake Dutch
street was also added to the collection of real houses.
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Another place where you can see the foreign influence is the foreigner's
cemetary,
used until around 1930. There is a section with French who died in the Boxer
Rebellion in China as well as the Jewish Cemetary you see at the left.
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In the Peace Park you can see the Hypocenter, the spot directly below the
atomic bomb blast. There is also a museum about the war and bombing. The
museum is openly critical of Japan's behavior in Asia and is surprisingly
unbiased when it comes to the issue of the bombing, despite Nagasaki being a
victim of that bombing. It made me
embarrassed after the uproar in the US when the Smithsonian Museum tried to
have an unbiased portrayal of the same event.
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