Nagasaki
(2001 est. pop. 430,000). Nagasaki is a seaport town on the west coast of Kyushu, Japan. Originally a tiny fishing village, Nagasaki first gained prominence with the establishment of its port by the Portuguese in 1571. It served as an active entrepôt of foreign trade and a haven for Christians until bakufu (shogunate) policies placed restrictive controls on trade and virtually eliminated Christianity. During the Edo period (1600/1603–1868), Nagasaki became Japan's primary source of contact with the outside world through its Chinese and Dutch settlements— the latter situated on the man-made island of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Nagasaki was designated one of Japan's foreign settlements and its streets were crowded with Western sailors, merchants, and missionaries. Nagasaki began to lose its international importance after the Russo-Japanese War and did not reenter the world stage until the catastrophic atomic bombing of the city by American military forces on 9 August 1945, in which more than 75,000 residents were killed.
Today, Mitsubishi Shipyards provides the principal economic impetus for Nagasaki. The city also relies heavily on tourism, and major tourist sites include Chinese temples and stone bridges, the Suwa Shrine (the home of the annual Kunchi Festival), Siebold Museum, Oura Catholic Church, Glover Garden, Dejima Museum, Monument of the Twenty-Six Saints, Urakami Cathedral, the Peace Park, and the Atomic Bomb Museum.
The Nagasaki Gas Works in August 1949, four years after the city was devastated by a United States atomic bomb, effectively ending World War II. (BETTMANN/CORBIS)Further Reading
Boxer, C. R. (1951) The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–1650. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Kaempfer, Engelbert. (1999) Kaempfer's Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed, edited by Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Paske-Smith, M. (1968) Western Barbarians in Japan and Formosa, 1603–1868. New York: Paragon Book Reprint.
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