The landscape in Hirado on the northwestern tip of Nagasaki Prefecture was recentlydesignated as one of Japan’s “important cultural landscapes”. Its signicance is in the

environment that has preserved the remnants of the earliest Catholic mission in the 16

century through the lifeways and beliefs of the hidden Christian communities. Their villages

and sacred sites that speak of the coexistence of Christianity with Shintō and Buddhism

were by the national and local authorities nominated for the inclusion on the UNESCO

Tentative List.