Nagasaki

Nagasaki (長崎市, Nagasaki-shi) ( listen ) is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became a centre of Portuguese and Dutch influence in the 16th through 19th centuries, and the Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasaki have been proposed for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Part of Nagasaki was home to a major Imperial Japanese Navy base during the First Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War. Its name means "long cape".

During World War II, the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made Nagasaki the second and, to date, last city in the world to experience a nuclear attack.

As of 1 January 2009, the city has an estimated population of 446,007 and a population density of 1,100 persons per km². The total area is 406.35 km².

History

Medieval and early modern history

A small fishing village secluded by harbours, Nagasaki had little historical significance until contact with Portuguese explorers in 1543. An early visitor was Fernão Mendes Pinto, who came on a Portuguese ship which landed nearby in Tanegashima.

Nagasaki (Schnittke)

Nagasaki is an oratorio composed by Soviet composer Alfred Schnittke in 1958, at the age of 25. It was Schnittke's graduation composition in the Moscow Conservatory, and the topic was suggested by his teacher Evgeny Golubev. The work was considered formalistic, and Schnittke was accused of forgetting the principles of Realism in music. Thus, he suppressed the expressionistic central movement depicting the nuclear explosion and modified the finale. It was recorded by the Moscow Radio Symphony in 1959 and broadcast to Japan through Voice of Russia, but it wasn't printed and it didn't receive any subsequent performances. Nagasaki was finally given its public premiere in its original form in Cape Town on 23 November 2006, eight years after Schnittke's death, by Hanneli Rupert and the Cape Philharmonic conducted by Owain Arwel Hughes.

It consists of five movements, on Soviet and Japanese lyrics:

Nagasaki (disambiguation)

Nagasaki is the capital city of Nagasaki Prefecture in Japan.

The word may also refer to: