Geography Reference
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as a World Heritage site shifts the context of the churches from their original reli-
gious context to a regional context of history and heritage. In the process, religion
may risk being used, distributed, and treated as consumer item.
Treating local religious culture as a cultural property is a double-edged sword.
While there is no doubt that this treatment ensures people realize its value and then
hand it down to future generations, registration as a cultural property is exactly the
same as giving new value to an individual local religious culture. The act of assign-
ing the culture with artistic, aesthetic, economic, and historic values changes the
culture's inherent religious value. For Christians, the ecclesiastical buildings
were established as religious spaces for ceremonies and for social living spaces.
The buildings had no original artistic or historic value. However, giving the churches
a secular value will inevitably produce a secular church hierarchy. The risk is ever
present that a categorization as a cultural property, such as a national treasure,
national important cultural property, prefecture-designated cultural property, or
non-designated cultural property, could lead to the asset being regarded as the valu-
ation of its religious local culture or as a commodity.
However, this single negative effect of heritage designation should not be over
emphasized. The global valuation standard for being registered as a World Heritage
site gives a local cultural landscape universal value. Yasuhuku ( 2000 ) wrote that tour-
ism was an important element in forming the social image of a place in the late twen-
tieth century. Registering a cultural property as a World Heritage site emphasizes the
remarkable universal value of distinctive cultures in different regions and countries.
Christians were a social minority in Nagasaki, who should also be valued as part
of the religious local culture of Nagasaki. This culture includes the hidden Christians
and martyrdom. Registration of the Church and historic sites as a World Heritage
site could positively affect the Christian culture, by promoting the Church Group as
a mainstream part of the region. The group could function as an integral symbol of
traditions and history of Nagasaki and present the local religious culture as a univer-
sal value on the global stage. Christian culture would establish the pride and identity
of a Christian and embody Christianity as a historic and experiential memory
(Yamanaka 2007a ).
Hamada's ( 2006 ) consideration of the infl uence of changes and reversals of tra-
ditional values with the grant of a new value on a local culture are infl uential.
Hamada argued the Mingei Movement does not have meaning in industrial promo-
tion but changes the value of a product. The Nagasaki Church Group and the pil-
grimage network of churches were established and focused attention on the group
(Kimura 2007a ). During the surge in the World Heritage registration movement, the
Catholic churches and other actors became more active, and have established pil-
grimage routes and sites to churches and martyrdom sites (Matsui 2006 ). Although
individual churches or martyrdom sites do not change, the meaning given to it gets
radically changed, and new value may be given to sites. The attention given to the
site forces a regrouping (Yamanaka 2007b ).
Our own church has been registered as a World Heritage site. This is exactly
discovering culture, with conversion of the value of the target then occurring. In the
end, a church that has been valued as a World Heritage site receives the attention of
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