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(Shackley 2001 ; Matsui 2005 ), deteriorate residents' living environments, increase
income disparities, and destroy natural environments and landscapes. Sites may
even lose value after designation as a World Heritage site (Goda and Arimoto 2004 ;
Saitsu 2006 ; Kuroda 2007 ). Some people question whether a World Heritage site
designation does actually lead to lasting development of an area. World Heritage
site designations can temporarily increase the number of tourists visiting an area,
but the increase may not be rapid or permanent. Tanno ( 2008 ) and Fujiki ( 2009 )
note the designation occasionally produces a temporary tourism boom. The desig-
nation largely depends on the assessment of the World Heritage Committee. The
global strategy adopted in 1994 requires that any imbalances in area and type desig-
nations should be taken into account and the representativeness and reliability of
heritage sites secured.
Much importance has often been attached to Europe, cities, religion, and build-
ings, but a more recent trend emphasizes the value of culture, traditions, and ethnic
landscape around the world. Until now, these sites have been regarded as too abstract
for designation, but a new emphasis is now being placed on the relationship between
people and land.
New World Heritage sites include landscapes such as the rice terraces in the
Philippine Cordilleras or the Gassho Villages of Shirakawa-go and Gokayama.
Since 1995, a movement that values cultural landscapes and places that express the
interaction between people and the environment as World Heritage sites has been
active. In this way, a change in the politics surrounding World Heritage designations
has resulted in the important challenge of conserving and using cultural landscapes
such as rural space (Urry 1990 , 1995 ; Endo and Horino 2004 ; Fujiki 2009 ).
Recently, rural geographers noted that one of the most signifi cant elements of
rural change in developed countries was the transition from an economy based on
production to an economy based on consumption (Woods 2005 ). This transition is
considered as the commodifi cation of rural spaces. Cloke ( 1993 ) suggested the
changing nature of rural space and highlighted the importance of understanding the
social and cultural constructs of rural entities. Cloke also demonstrated new markets
for countryside commodities, such as rural lifestyles, landscapes, and produce in
Britain. After his paper appeared, commodifi cation was thought to be an integral
part of rural changes, and therefore underpinned the establishment of new rural
geography and ensembles of rural production and consumption that may be under-
stood as re-resourced rural areas (Perkins 2006 ).
The most prominent consumer of rural places is tourism (Woods 2005 ). In the
literature of Japanese rural studies, Tachikawa ( 2005 ) focused on rural functions
beyond agriculture in terms of post-productivism and discussed urban consumers'
demands for rural space for uses such as tourism, scenic beauty, and healing.
Takahashi ( 1998 , 1999 ) analyzed how rurality has been socially constructed and how
various actors and their networks linking locality and broader social spaces engaged
in rural dynamics through representing their interests over the locality. Iguchi et al.
( 2008 ) and Tabayashi et al. ( 2008 ) used case studies in Japan to depict the commodi-
fi cation process of rural spaces and examine the developing tourist industries.
This paper examines the World Heritage registration movement of the Nagasaki
Church Group and Christian-Related Cultural Assets (called Nagasaki Church
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