Kuroshima

The ferry from Ainoura stops first at Takashima, a fishing island, then runs on through the Kujukushima islands to Kuroshima, about 12 kilometres around and covered in dark evergreen woods. Sasebo's tourism association says around eight in ten islanders are Catholic, and the reason goes back to cattle and horses. The Hirado domain kept a horse ranch here in the 1600s, closed it in the early 1800s and then invited settlers to farm the land. Many who came, from Sotome and elsewhere, were Hidden Christians, and six of the seven new hamlets were theirs. On paper they belonged to Koshen-ji, a Zen temple in Honmura, where they prayed to a statue of the bodhisattva Kannon that they treated as Mary. That statue no longer survives, but the temple bell still carries their names. Every year the domain made them step on an image of Christ or Mary at the village office.

After 1865, when Hidden Christians in Nagasaki made themselves known to the French priests at Oura Church, Kuroshima's leaders made contact in secret, and in 1872 the whole community rejoined the Catholic Church. The present Kuroshima Church went up in the centre of the island on the site of the first one from 1879. Joseph Ferdinand Marmand of the Paris Foreign Missions Society designed it and ran the work himself, and it was blessed in June 1902. It is said to have taken about 400,000 bricks, some fired on the island, on footings of local granite, with Arita porcelain tiles on the sanctuary floor, a pulpit with carving by Marmand himself, and wood grain on the vaulted ceiling that is painted by hand. Quake-proofing and repairs ran from 2019 to 2021. The parish still prays each week in atonement for those forced steps on the images.

The World Heritage component, Villages on Kuroshima Island, one of the 12 parts of the Hidden Christian Sites inscribed in 2018, is the whole landscape rather than the church alone: the fields cut from the old ranch, Koshen-ji, the site of the Deguchi family house where Mass was first said, and cemeteries of granite graves topped with crosses. Downsides: three sailings a day, no buses or taxis, and a steep 30-minute walk up from the port. Take the 10:00 boat out and the 15:30 back for a day trip.