Sacred Places, Pilgrimage, and Tourism - Geography of Religion in Japan: Religious Space, Landscape, and Behavior - page 176

any cultivated fi elds or to live in coastal places unsuitable for fi shing. Christians
suffered from poverty and social discrimination. A Sotome Region folksong
includes the lines “To Goto, to Goto, everyone wants to go. Even the land of Goto
is kind.” However, Christians were closely monitored by the government of the
time. Christians fi nally won the freedom to practice their religion between 1880 and
1920 and began to build Catholic churches on the islands. Up to 50 Catholic
churches still exist on the Goto Islands, 1 and some are rated highly for their value as
cultural assets. The cultural value of the churches on the Goto islands led the inclu-
sion as church-related assets of the Nagasaki area in the tentative list of World
Cultural Heritage sites by Nagasaki Church Group and Christian-Related Cultural
Assets in January 2007.
Efforts to boost employment through tourism are popular in many remote islands,
and the Goto Islands are no exception because public works have been downsized.
Tourism promotion uses religious and cultural assets unique to the islands, such as
Catholic churches and hidden Christian martyrdom sites. On Kami-Goto, which has
a small population and little industry, expectations about Christianity-related tour-
ism are particularly high because of the World Heritage Registration Campaign.
About 15 % of the population of approximately 80,000 on the Goto Islands is
Catholic, but about 25 % of Kami-Goto residents are Catholic, the highest percent-
age of all municipal bodies in Japan. People living on the islands have strong expec-
tations regarding the Catholic Church group, and consider the cultural assets to have
been nurtured by history and the fudo of the Goto Islands, which is their only major
economic resource. This section therefore discusses how the Catholic Church group
and the religious culture of hidden Christians have been turned into tourism
resources, and the expectations of the tourists and pilgrims visiting the churches
regarding new religious tourism.
The theme of the tourism promotion vision was developed by the town of
Shinkami-Goto in February 2007, 2 around “An Island to encounter Future World
Heritage sites.” The theme proposed to promote tourism by using church tours as
the main pillar. This promotion leverages the tentative registration of the Nagasaki
Church Group on the World Cultural Heritage site list, and the Project for mysteri-
ous islands where future World Cultural Heritage sites can be encountered. The
project plans to develop pilgrim and church experience programs, such as church
visiting and Carol singing.
Kami-Goto has a smaller population and weaker industrial foundation and social
capital than Shimo-Goto, but the higher proportion of Christians leads to a high
expectation of Christianity as a tourism resource. The following chapter examines
how Christianity could be used as a tourism resource, focusing on Kami-Goto, but
also including other Goto Islands.
1 Of these, Ebukuro Church burnt down on February 12, 2007. The church is currently being
reconstructed.
2 In the Kami-Goto region, fi ve towns (Wakamatsu, Kami-Goto, Shinuonome, Arikawa, and
Narao) merged on August 1, 2004 to become Shinkami-Goto town. The population in December
2008 was 24,139.