Egami Church

Most of the Goto churches you see in photographs stand on a headland or above a harbour. Egami Church hides. It sits in a small valley on the west coast of Naru Island, screened by big tabu trees, with the Naru Strait in front and Hisaka Island across the water, and you only see it when the road drops down to it. The building is wooden, white with pale blue frames, and smaller than you expect.

The village began with Hidden Christians. From the late 1700s families from Sotome on the Nagasaki mainland moved to the Goto Islands, first to empty Kuzurashima and then into valleys on Naru far from the Buddhist villages; four households are said to have settled at Egami. They kept their faith in secret, rejoined the Catholic Church after the ban ended in 1873, and for years used a leader's house for Mass. In 1917, with savings from net fishing for kibinago, the small silver sardine-like fish of these waters, the parish of 40 to 50 households hired Tetsukawa Yosuke, the builder behind many Nagasaki churches. They cleared the trees themselves, and the church was blessed on 8 March 1918.

The design deals with the site. Spring water runs behind the church and the sea is close, so the floor is set high, and the crosses cut into the boards under the eaves are vents as well as ornament. Inside, the plan has three aisles under a ribbed vault; the woodgrain on the pillars is painted by hand and the clear window glass carries painted flowers. Nagasaki's World Heritage office calls it the most complete in design and structure of the region's wooden churches, and it has been an Important Cultural Property since 2008. Egami Village on Naru Island, the church and its surroundings, is one of the 12 parts of the Hidden Christian Sites inscribed as World Heritage in 2018.

Plan ahead. Visits need advance notice, a parishioner receives visitors from 9:00 to 12:00 and 13:00 to 15:30, and on Mondays and the third Sunday of each month you cannot even enter the grounds to see the outside. Photography inside is not allowed. Park at the former Egami Elementary School next door; no cars or bicycles in the church grounds.