Sacred Places, Pilgrimage, and Tourism - Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior - page 167

from both in and outside Nagasaki selects historic cultural heritage stories at a
Special Meeting to Create Stories (Education Board). Distinctive local resources
and historic culture are used to promote tourism, for example, by creating tourist
routes with special local meanings and the development of tourism products.
The board's intention is to create a historical Nagasaki brand. The fi rst historical
theme covered was Christian culture, because Christian culture is particular to
Nagasaki and is a powerful theme for use abroad. The program issued six volumes
“Traveling and Studying Nagasaki” (edited by Christian culture). These topics are
guides to the history and noted places of the Christian culture in Nagasaki and cov-
ered the arrival of Francis Xavier at Hirado, the Christian daimyo of Nagasaki, the
delegation of Tensho young envoys, the martyrdom of the twenty-six saints, the
Shimabara rebellion, and the hidden Christians in the Edo era.
The Nagasaki Prefectural Tourist Federation also considers Christianity important
to the tourism strategy of Nagasaki. The tourism strategy of the prefecture considered
theme-type tourism an important issue, and Christian culture was the most powerful
theme in the industrial heritage of Gunkan-jima. One concrete product development
was the “Nagasaki Kirishitan Kiko” (Nagasaki Christian Travel). The Nagasaki
Prefectural Tourist Federation printed 500,000 booklets that describe the prefecture
in fi ve parts, Hirado-Ikitsuki-Tabira, Sasebo-Kamigoto, Goto, Fukue-island,
Nagasaki City, Nishi-Sonogi, and Shimabara-Unzen-Amakusa, and provided model
routes to tour the churches. The federation also created a booklet to explain special
points of the ecclesiastical architecture with the help of the Catholic Archdiocese of
Nagasaki, and adopted positive use of church tours to help promote tourism. The
federation also took particular care to consider Christians' sensibility by explaining
protocol when visiting churches and the manners expected of tourists in churches.
The concept of Christian travel is high-class-oriented and high-value-added, and
targets the baby-boomer generation. Guides provide guest-oriented travel in small
groups. Christian travel was created as a comfortable plan, although the costs are
high. The promoters aim to satisfy customer's needs to learn about history and
culture. People who wish to take advantage of this type of heritage tourism include
many people who have traveled in Japan and abroad often, and are curious about
unknown places such as isolated islands.

4.2.4.2 Sacred Places as Consumer Items and the Actors Involved

Church tours as a pilgrimage were also promoted by the Catholic Church. In 2005,
the Catholic Archdiocese of Nagasaki issued the “Perfect Guide to Churches in
Nagasaki and Amakusa and Pilgrimage Sites” as a guidebook to the Catholic
churches in Nagasaki and Amakusa (Kumamoto Prefecture) to introduce readers to
ecclesiastical architecture and history. The churches are numbered to promote pil-
grimage tours, and the guidebook lists sites that commemorate martyrs, martyrdom
sites, and monuments. The last half of the topic describes graveyards and tomb-
stones and the ruins of the Seminario, which are also introduced as part of a pilgrim-
age to sacred places. In this way, the Catholic Church has also responded to tourism