Nagasaki

The province

Get to know Nagasaki

Nagasaki sits on the western tip of Kyushu, with a jagged coast and hundreds of islands. The port received the Portuguese in the 16th century and, during Japan’s period of isolation from the 17th to 19th centuries, was the only point of trade with the West, via the artificial island of Dejima, where the Dutch lived.

The city of Nagasaki was hit by the atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. Peace Park, with the Peace Statue, and the Atomic Bomb Museum are in the Urakami district. Dejima has been reconstructed with period houses and warehouses. On the hill, Glover Garden brings together 19th-century houses of Western merchants, and the nearby Oura Church is a national treasure. Mount Inasa offers a nighttime view of the bay. Castella, a sponge cake brought by the Portuguese, and champon, noodles with seafood, are local specialties.

Gunkanjima, Hashima Island, was an undersea coal mine covered with concrete buildings, abandoned in the 1970s. It is part of the UNESCO Sites of the Meiji Industrial Revolution and is visited on boat tours when the sea conditions allow a landing.

The Sites of Hidden Christians of Nagasaki and Amakusa, inscribed by UNESCO in 2018, include churches and villages where Christians kept their faith in secret during the prohibition, such as on the Goto Islands and in Sotome. In Shimabara, Mount Unzen has hot springs with steam vents, called “hells.” In Sasebo, Kujukushima Bay has dozens of tree-covered islands.