Bending history into heritage at hidden Christian sites in Nagasaki, Japan: UNESCO World Heritage site designation and tourism

ABSTRACTA UNESCO World Heritage site designation is seen as a pathway to developing sustainable tourism and increasing opportunities to receive funding for the maintenance and management of the site. However, the designation of sites is often highly political with criticisms raised regarding the processes used by UNESCO. The inflexibility of selection criteria and the demand for tangible evidence of authenticity are inevitably jeopardising the selection of important heritage sites that need to be preserved. Outsider interference, distortion of historical facts, staging, and the Disneyfication of heritage are other contentions raised over how applications are manipulated to achieve a UNESCO designation. Through a qualitative narrative analysis and site visits, this paper examines the case of Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region of Japan to examine how the intervention of ICOMOS significantly altered its application for World Heritage site designation and the resulting challenges the applicants faced in satisfying the selection criteria, thereby staging their heritage for tourism in the process. Greater recognition of local voices and alternative narratives is critical in the designation process to be true to history in an age dominated by heritage.KEYWORDS: UNESCO World Heritage sitesICOMOSNagasaki Hidden ChristiandistortionDisneyficationtourism Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Additional informationNotes on contributorsAtsuko HashimotoAtsuko Hashimoto is Professor in the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies at Brock University, Canada. Her areas of research include Green Tourism in rural Japan, socio-cultural issues in tourism, culinary tourism, heritage tourism, and social justice in tourism.David J. TelferDavid J. Telfer is Professor in the Department of Geography and Tourism Studies at Brock University, Canada. His areas of research include the relationship between development theory and tourism, tourism planning, heritage tourism, and Green Tourism in rural Japan.