Nagasaki

Nagasaki was a fishing village until the local lord Omura Sumitada, a convert to Christianity, opened its deep harbour to Portuguese ships in 1571. The town grew quickly around the trade and was for a time administered by the Jesuits, until Toyotomi Hideyoshi took it under direct control in 1588. As the authorities turned against the foreign religion, twenty-six Christians were executed on Nishizaka hill in 1597, and persecution intensified after the Shimabara Rebellion of the 1630s.

Under the seclusion policy that followed, Nagasaki became the single place where foreign trade was permitted. The fan-shaped island of Dejima, built in 1636, housed first the Portuguese and then, from 1641, the Dutch East India Company; Chinese merchants were confined to a separate walled compound. Through this narrow channel came books, medicine, astronomy and painting, studied across Japan as rangaku, Dutch learning, and Nagasaki acquired temples founded by Chinese residents and a cosmopolitan reputation unlike anywhere else in the country.

The port opened fully after the treaties of 1858. Western merchants built houses on the Minamiyamate slope — among them the Scot Thomas Blake Glover, who helped bring modern coal mining and shipbuilding to Japan — and the harbour became one of the country's great shipyards. At 11.02 on 9 August 1945 an atomic bomb exploded over the Urakami valley, killing tens of thousands of people, destroying the cathedral and the district around it, and leaving effects that lasted for decades. The city rebuilt around the memory: Urakami Cathedral was raised again in 1959, and successive mayors have made nuclear disarmament the city's public cause.

Few Japanese cities carry so many foreign layers. Chinese influence runs through the Obaku Zen temples, the Confucius Shrine, the lantern festival and the food; Portuguese and Dutch traces survive in sponge cake, in loan words and in the Western houses of Glover Garden. Catholic Christianity, hidden for two centuries in the villages and islands of the prefecture, is still practised here, and the Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region are a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The festivals show the same mixture. Kunchi, held at Suwa Shrine in early October, is performed by a rotation of neighbourhood teams and combines Chinese dragon dances with floats shaped as foreign ships. At the close of Obon in August, families pull straw spirit boats through the streets towards the water in Shoro Nagashi, accompanied by strings of firecrackers loud enough to be heard across the valley — a send-off rather than a mourning procession.

Remembrance shapes public life. Survivors of the bombing, the hibakusha, have given testimony for generations, schools take part in peace education, and the ceremony each 9 August is attended by foreign delegations. Local manners are otherwise those of provincial Kyushu: easygoing, talkative, fond of shochu and of long meals. The city also keeps its own dialect and a strong sense of being a port that looked outwards when the rest of the country did not.

About 400,000 people live in the city, down from a peak in the 1970s, and the population is falling and ageing faster than the national average as young people leave for Fukuoka and the larger cities. Housing climbs the slopes in tight terraces reached by steps, and some hillside streets are served only by stairways and slope lifts, which makes daily life demanding for older residents.

Shipbuilding and heavy engineering on the harbour remain the industrial base, alongside fishing, food processing, the prefectural government and hospitals. Tourism matters a great deal: cruise ships call at the harbour, and the memorials, Dejima, Glover Garden and the Hashima boat trips draw visitors year-round. The Shinkansen's arrival in 2022 and the redevelopment around the station and the former stadium site have changed the northern centre considerably.

The rhythm is that of a compact provincial city. Trams rattle along the valley from early morning, shoppers fill the Hamamachi arcades in the afternoon, and the bars of Shianbashi are busy in the evening. Depopulation, the future of the shipyards, landslide risk on the slopes and the ageing of the surviving hibakusha are the issues most discussed locally.

Nagasaki's cooking is the clearest evidence of its history. Champon, thick noodles in a milky pork-and-chicken broth loaded with squid, prawns, pork, cabbage and bean sprouts, was created in the city by a Chinese restaurateur to feed students cheaply; sara udon serves the same toppings as a thick sauce over noodles fried until crisp. Both are eaten across Japan now but belong here. Shippoku is the city's banquet tradition, a round table of Japanese, Chinese and European dishes shared by everyone present.

Sweet things came with the Portuguese. Castella, a dense honey sponge baked in long loaves, has been made in Nagasaki since the 16th century and is the standard gift from the city. Chinatown sells steamed pork buns and sesame dumplings, and kakuni manju — a slab of slow-braised pork belly in a folded steamed bun — is sold from counters and stalls.

The harbour supplies the rest. Nagasaki Prefecture lands a great deal of Japan's fish, and mackerel, horse mackerel, sea bream and squid appear on izakaya menus; hatoshi, a shrimp paste sandwich deep-fried, is a local snack of Chinese origin. Toruko rice, a plate of pilaf, spaghetti and a breaded pork cutlet under curry sauce, is a post-war invention found in the city's older Western-style restaurants. Loquats grown in the prefecture appear in early summer, and shochu and local sake are the usual drinks.