Urakami was an area in the northern part of the city of

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

History

In 1614, by the orders of shōgun leader

Tokugawa Ieyasu was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, which ruled Japan from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was one of the three "Great Unifiers" of Japan, along with his former lord Oda Nobunaga and fello ...

, Christianity was banned in Japan in order to suppress European influence and to prevent the undermining of the Japanese government. Most Japanese Christians who openly spoke about their religion were open to prosecution and subject to extreme harsh treatment, such as torture or crucifixion. As a result, Urakami became the stronghold for oppressed believers who steadfastly adhered to their religion in secret.A stronghold for believers of a banned Christian faith. The center of Nagasaki that experienced an atomic bomb blast.
/ref> During this time period, the Oura Cathedral played the important role as spiritual support for Christians in Urakami. The existence of Christians within the Urakami area resulted the Japanese government to launch a crackdown in order to implement the ban. On September 1, 1790, the first persecution began in Urakami; hidden Christians were discovered and arrested, though there were no deaths. In 1839, a new wave of persecution was launched in Urakami, though this too didn’t result in any deaths either. But in the third kuzure (literally, ”disintegration"), conducted in 1859, more than 10 people died under torture. The fourth and final persecution was conducted between 1867 and 1873, better known as the

Urakami Yoban Kuzure was the last and biggest of four crackdowns on Christians in Urakami Village, Nagasaki, Japan in the 19th century. Christianity was prohibited in Japan for 259 years, from 1614 after the Catholic Church was seen as a threat, when Nagasaki had gr ...

. During the process, 68 residents of Urakami were arrested and were forced to renounce their religion entirely. This led to protests from foreign consuls, and the Tokugawa Shogunate relented. However, soon after Tokugawa Shogunate ended and in February 1868 the new

Meiji government The was the government that was formed by politicians of the Satsuma Domain and Chōshū Domain in the 1860s. The Meiji government was the early government of the Empire of Japan. Politicians of the Meiji government were known as the Meiji ...

appointed Sawa Nobuyoshi in charge of public order in Kyūshū. His dislike of all things foreign was well known, and, after consultation, he decided to deal with the problem once and for all. His plan to exile the entire village was approved by an Imperial council on 25 April and implemented in two stages: first the ringleaders to Hagi, Tsuwano and Fukuyama, and then the rest of the village. Families were split up, and in total 3,414 Christian men, women, and children were sent into exile to all over Japan: 500 to Kanazawa, 160 to Tsuwano, 150 to Satsuma, 117 to Tsuru Shima, Okayama, etc.Izumi Interview in, Photo-Documentary of Christian history in Japan with Concentration on Hidden Christians, Eagan, B., St. Olaf College (2006). Retrieved 2009-09-15. http://www.stolaf.edu/depts/asian-studies/projects/kakurekirishitan/transcripts.html However, under pressure, and wanting to keep the relationship with the United States and European countries, especially after the Japanese government opened to the world in the 1850s, the ban was lifted in 1873 and the Japanese Christians were finally able to return to Urakami. In 1895, Christians built the first cathedral in Japan in the Urakami area. The construction of the cathedral was fully completed in 1925. On August 9, 1945, near the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Urakami became the site for

ground zero In relation to nuclear explosions and other large bombs, ground zero (also called surface zero) is the point on the Earth's surface closest to a detonation. In the case of an explosion above the ground, ''ground zero'' is the point on the grou ...

when the atomic bomb exploded at about a height of . The damage caused by the heat rays and the blast was almost entirely restricted to this area, while the Nakashima area was fairly well shielded by the hills. However, 36% of the total structures in both areas were damaged. The Urakami Cathedral was also heavily damaged during the blast. Following the war, Urakami was rebuilt and now houses the once-damaged Cathedral site.

References

External links

{{coord, 32.773753, 129.863251, format=dms, display=inline,title, type:landmark_region:JP_scale:10000 (ground zero) Nuclear warfare Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Geography of Nagasaki Prefecture Christianity in Japan

History

See also

References

External links