Settlements in Kugashima

Located near the site of Ishida Castle (Fukue Castle), the street is followed by an old stone wall fence that still bears the image of the Edo period. Along the roughly 400m street connecting Nakachō and Minami-cho, dwellings of the middle-class samurai class of Goshima Domain (Fukue Domain) were once lined. The round pebbles piled in the shape of a kamaboko on the stone wall are called "spilling stones", and are said to have the role of a weapon in the event of an emergency to inform the intruder from outside by sound. In the middle of the street, there are facilities such as the "Fukue Samurai Yashiki Street Furusato-kan", which was built on the site of the city's designated historic site, "Fukue Samurai Yashiki Street", and the "Yamamoto Niisō Museum", which uses the samurai Yashiki Matsuzo residence, which can be enjoyed even just by walking.

One of the constituent assets of the World Cultural Heritage "Hidden Christian Related Heritage of Nagasaki and the Amakusa Region". Egami Settlement is a settlement located in the northwestern part of Naru Island in the central Five Island Islands. In the late Edo period, some of the hidden Christians who had migrated from the outer waters of the Omura clan in a pact with the Goshima Domain formed settlements in various places on the island, including Nagahae, Tsubakihara, and Nanetsu in Naru. Four houses were also settled in Egami, a valley close to the remote sea. It said that each settlement continued their faith secretly, with leaders as the center, and many people maintained their hiding-era faith in Narushima even after the ban on Christianity. All of the people in the village of Egami returned to Catholicism in Meiji 14 (1881), and in the late Meiji period built a simple church. The present-day Egami Cathedral was erected in 1918. If you stroll through the Egami district, you can see the status of the settlement of Tanisako Topography [Tanisako Chikei], which is a typical example of a migration site, and the quiet setting of the Egami Cathedral, which is a representative example of a wooden church adapted to it.

Kuga Island Tourism Exchange Base Facility, which has also been selected as a constituent asset "Kuga Island Settlement" of the World Cultural Heritage "Hidden Christian Related Heritage in Nagasaki and Amakusa Region" and as a national important cultural landscape "Cultural Landscape of Kuga Island, Goshima City". It is located in the Kuga district in the innermost part of Kuga Bay, and was opened by renovating the "Fujiwara House", a wooden one-story old private house built in the middle of the Meiji era, and has a guidance function for world heritage and cultural landscapes. Inside the museum, there is also a material exhibition room that introduces the nature and life of Kuga Island, the landscape of settlements and the history of the hidden Christians, as well as a tourist information corner that introduces the island's recommended sights with photos and maps. If you rest in the exchange/break space, buy souvenirs such as Tsubaki oil from "Kugashima Farm" at the goods sales corner and go home. With advance reservations up to three days in advance, the company also offers meals made with ingredients from Kugashima, such as Goshima udon noodles and sashimi.