Nagasaki is known, of course, as a city that was devastated by the atomic bombing, and many people around the world are familiar with its name for this reason.
For foreigners who love opera, some may think of Nagasaki as the setting of Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madama Butterfly" (1904). It tells the tragic love story between an American naval officer, Pinkerton, and a Japanese geisha named Butterfly. The setting and characters, as well as the possibility that the Glover Mansion and its residents served as inspiration, make it an easily accepted theory. It may be difficult to emotionally connect with the exotic story, but the work itself remains popular and is repeatedly performed.
And in recent years, for young people from abroad, it is the presence of British author Kazuo Ishiguro that expands their image of Nagasaki, and perhaps also from the novel "Silence" (1966) by Shusaku Endo.
In 2017, Kazuo Ishiguro, who spent the first five years of his life in Nagasaki, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His early works "A Pale View of Hills" (1982) and "An Artist of the Floating World" (1986) both feature his imagined version of Nagasaki. Fans of Ishiguro shouldn't miss out on visiting this place.
And a few years ago, Martin Scorsese's film "Silence" (2016) was released. The film was a project that the director had been considering for several decades, and it gained attention in Japan due to the appearance of actor Yosuke Kuboduka. The film is based on the novel by Shusaku Endo, which has been translated into over ten languages worldwide. Thanks to the novel and the film, Nagasaki's name may have become more widely recognized overseas. By the way, there is the Shusaku Endo Literature Museum in the coastal area that served as the setting for the novel, about 40 minutes by car from Nagasaki Station.
In addition, for young people in Japan, the famous destination in Nagasaki would be the theme park "Huis Ten Bosch". Fans of the singer Masaharu Fukuyama may also know that he was born in Nagasaki.
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Sketches of Nagasaki in the Edo period: as a gateway to the world｜柳基善 千年の旅