The UNESCO World Heritage Committee decided to add Japan's "Hidden Christian sites in Nagasaki and Amakusa region" to its World Cultural Heritage list in a meeting in Manama on Saturday.
In May, the Paris-based International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body to UNESCO, recommended that the hidden Christian cultural sites in Nagasaki and Kumamoto prefectures be added to the list.
The sites together are the 18th cultural heritage site in Japan to join the World Heritage list -- or 22nd if World Natural Heritage sites are included.
The Christian sites are mainly places where communities of Christians secretly practiced their faith, even when the religion was banned in Japan from the 17th to 19th centuries.
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