With UNESCO’s recent approval of Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution for inscription on the World Heritage List, Kyushu will get its very first word heritage sites. The site includes 16 properties in the five prefectures of Fukuoka, Saga, Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima (in addition to 7 sites in eight other prefectures). Hopes are high that the world heritage inscription will boost the tourism appeal of the sites and attract money-spending tourists to the respective regions. At the same time, the Japanese site administrators are obligated to not only preserve the sites for future generations, but to engage in a historical dialogue. The Japanese delegation to UNESCO agreed to “incorporate measures into the interpretive strategy to remember” the Korean and Chinese laborers who were forced to work at some of the sites during the war. Pictured below is Miyaharakou, Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture. Source: Nishinippon Shimbun 7/6 (photo source)
