The Authenticity of the Hidden Christians’ Villages in Nagasaki: Issues in Evaluation of Cultural Landscapes

Tinka Delakorda Kawashima
Additional contact information
Tinka Delakorda Kawashima: Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima University, 1-1-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8524, Japan

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 8, 1-22

Abstract: Located in the north-western part of Kyushu, “Hidden Christians Sites in the Nagasaki Region” were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018. This serial property consists of twelve sites, including the Christian villages that bear unique testimony to a cultural tradition nurtured under a long period of religious prohibition. Based on fieldwork research at Kirishitan villages in Hirado City, this paper shows how the global conservation strategies affect the local people and the sustainability of their cultural tradition. Comparing UNESCO and Japanese cultural landscape protection policies, I argue that the evaluation and selection of sites that begin at the local authorities and stakeholders’ level, is eventually reduced to tangible properties ready-made for tourist consumption. Here, the evaluation subsides under the UNESCO authenticity criteria and narrow governmental interests towards the cultural tradition it is supposed to protect. Therefore, for the protection of cultural landscapes and the living traditions, the decisions by cultural heritage protection authorities should be carefully made, based on scientific research of a cultural tradition, and in the interest of the tradition’s living successors.

Keywords: cultural landscape; authenticity; intangible heritage; cultural tradition; Hidden Christians; Senpuku Kirishitan; Kakure Kirishitan; Japan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4387/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/8/4387/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:8:p:4387-:d:536315

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().