Villages on Hisaka Island and Ono Village in Sotome

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Villages on Hisaka Island

   Hisaka is a small island just across a narrow strait from Fukue, in the Goto archipelago far out in the East China Sea west of Nagasaki, and it has a quiet, particular history. Christianity arrived in Japan in the sixteenth century, was banned by the shogunate in the early seventeenth, and ruthlessly suppressed. Yet in the countryside around Nagasaki, communities went on practising in secret for more than two hundred years, mixing Catholic prayers with Buddhist and Shinto forms in order to avoid detection. They are known as the Hidden Christians, or Kakure Kirishitan. In the late eighteenth century, the lord of the Goto islands asked for farmers from the mainland to settle his empty land, and many of those who came were secret Christians, glad to move to a remote place where they might be left alone.

   Read the complete Villages on Hisaka Island write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villages on Hisaka Island is where the day begins. Next is Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island.

2. 2. Ono Village in Sotome

   For more than two centuries Christianity was banned in Japan, and in the villages along the Sotome coast north of Nagasaki, communities practised their faith in secret, disguising prayers as Buddhist chants and hiding images of the Virgin as the bodhisattva Kannon. These were the Hidden Christians, the Kakure Kirishitan, and their villages, including Ono, are part of the World Heritage listing of Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region, inscribed in 2018. At Ono the small Ono church, built by the French missionary Marc Marie de Rotz in the late nineteenth century after the ban was lifted, has thick walls built in a local technique of stones bound with mortar, known as de Rotz walls.

   Read the complete Ono Village in Sotome write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 308 km into the recorded legs you reach Ono Village in Sotome. Next is back through Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island.

3. 3. Back to Villages on Hisaka Island

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villages on Hisaka Island write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Remains of Villages on Nozaki Island, late in the day. Next is Villages on Hisaka Island.

4. 4. Villages on Hisaka Island

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villages on Hisaka Island write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Villages on Hisaka Island. That is the ride.