Nagasaki

Nagasaki Prefecture occupies the far west of Kyushu: the western half of the old province of Hizen, broken into the Nishisonogi, Nagasaki and Shimabara peninsulas, plus the offshore islands of Gotō, Hirado, Iki and Tsushima. Nearly half of its land lies on islands, and it counts more islands than any other prefecture. Tsushima lies closer to the Korean Peninsula than to Kyushu's main cities, and Fukue in the Gotō Islands is one of the westernmost towns of Japan proper.

That position shaped its history. Portuguese traders and Jesuit missionaries arrived in the sixteenth century, Nagasaki grew from a fishing village into an international port, and after Christianity was banned the city remained, through Dejima and the Chinese quarter, the only place where the Tokugawa shogunate allowed regular trade with Europeans. Christians who went underground in remote villages kept their faith for more than 250 years; their sites are inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage property.

In the modern era Nagasaki became a centre of shipbuilding and coal mining, and Sasebo a naval port. On 9 August 1945 the city of Nagasaki became the second, and so far last, city to be destroyed by an atomic bomb in war. Today the prefecture combines shipbuilding, fisheries and tourism, and the city presents itself as a city of peace.

The name Nagasaki (長崎, "long cape") originally referred to the long promontory on which the port was founded in 1571; it is also associated with the Nagasaki family, local lords of the area in the medieval period. The prefecture was created in 1868 as Nagasaki-fu, from the shogunate's former magistracy, became Nagasaki-ken in 1869 and absorbed the domains of Ōmura, Shimabara, Hirado and Fukue when the han were abolished in 1871. Iki and Tsushima were added in the early 1870s. Saga was merged into Nagasaki in 1876 and split off again in 1883, which fixed the modern border across the old province of Hizen.

The prefecture is almost all coast. Drowned valleys and rias create deep, sheltered bays such as Ōmura Bay, an almost enclosed inland sea, and the harbours of Nagasaki and Sasebo. Flat land is scarce: settlements cling to slopes and narrow valleys, and the city of Nagasaki climbs the hills around its harbour. In the east the Shimabara Peninsula is dominated by the Unzen volcanic group, whose youngest dome, Heisei Shinzan (1,483 m), formed in the eruption of 1990 to 1995 and is the prefecture's highest point.

Offshore, the Gotō Islands stretch south-west into the East China Sea, while Iki and Tsushima lie in the Tsushima Strait between Kyushu and Korea. Much of the coast and islands is protected in Saikai National Park and Unzen-Amakusa National Park.

The climate is humid subtropical and moderated by the warm Tsushima Current: mild winters with little snow on the coast, hot and humid summers, and heavy rain during the tsuyu (early-summer rainy season). Typhoons regularly pass in late summer and autumn. Upland Unzen is noticeably cooler and was developed as a summer retreat.

The islands of Iki and Tsushima appear in the third-century Chinese chronicles as stations on the route to the Wa people, and both bore the brunt of the Mongol invasions of 1274 and 1281. From 1550 Portuguese ships called at Hirado and then Nagasaki, which the Christian daimyo Ōmura Sumitada opened in 1571 and briefly ceded to the Jesuits. Hideyoshi took the port under direct control, and the execution of the Twenty-Six Martyrs in 1597 marked the start of a long persecution.

After the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637 to 1638 the shogunate expelled the Portuguese and from 1641 confined the Dutch to Dejima. Nagasaki became the conduit of rangaku (Western learning) and of trade with China, while hidden Christians preserved their faith in secret. After the port reopened in 1859, merchants such as Thomas Glover helped industrialise the region; Mitsubishi's shipyard and the undersea coal mines of Takashima and Hashima followed. The atomic bomb of 1945 destroyed the Urakami district and killed tens of thousands; the city was rebuilt as a place of remembrance and peace advocacy.

Nagasaki's culture is a layered one: Chinese temples and festivals, Catholic churches in fishing villages, Dutch-era sweets and a local cuisine known as wa-ka-ran (Japanese, Chinese and Dutch). The islands keep their own traditions, from the Korean-influenced heritage of Tsushima to the churches of Gotō.

Foreign contact left its mark on the table: sponge cake from the Portuguese, noodle dishes and banquet cooking from Chinese residents. The seas around the islands supply one of the largest fish catches in Japan.

Shipbuilding remains the prefecture's industrial signature, led by the Mitsubishi yards in Nagasaki and the shipyard in Sasebo, alongside machinery and electronics. Fisheries are among the most productive in Japan, especially for horse mackerel, sea bream and farmed tuna and pearls. Agriculture on limited land specialises in loquats, potatoes and mandarins. Tourism draws on the World Heritage sites, Huis Ten Bosch, Unzen and the islands, and Sasebo is home to a major US Navy and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force base.