Bastian’s Hut
Bastian was a seventeenth-century Japanese evangelist famous for two things. In 1634, he compiled a church calendar that, when adapted to Japan’s lunar year, was used for the Hidden Christians’ liturgical year. He also made four prophecies that appeared to predict the lifting of the prohibition against Christianity in seven generations’ time (roughly 230 years), which actually came true.
Little is known about Bastian’s life. He is thought to have been born in Nunomaki, about halfway down the Nagasaki Peninsula, and he spent most of his existence in hiding, continuously moving around to avoid capture. This simple stone cottage with its wooden shingle roof is a reconstruction on the site of a hut where Bastian once hid.
When the movie director Martin Scorsese visited the Sotome area to research his 2016 movie Silence, he was so impressed by this hut that he had a similar structure built for the film; it was used as the house of the religious leader of Sotome (the area called Tomogi in the film).