World heritage listing as a catalyst for collaboration: can Mount Fuji’s trail signs point the way for Japan’s multi-purpose national parks?

ABSTRACT

Iconic Mount Fuji has symbolized the fragmented state of Japan’s ‘multi-purpose’ national park administration. Although the Ministry of Environment (MOE) is the legal administrator, the national parkland is predominantly owned by the Forestry Agency, with many services provided by local governments. This complex combination can result in stakeholders pitted against each other, but listing as a World Heritage Site (WHS) offers an external incentive toward holistic management. This paper reviews Fuji’s 2013 WHS inscription process, analyzing official documents and a series of stakeholder interviews to substantiate claims that it helped catalyze stakeholder collaboration, as demonstrated by a new system of trail signs. A cross-cutting council formed in 2009 issued a set of guidelines aimed at standardization of place names, and the removal of unnecessary or low-quality signs. Subsequently, a simplified system of color-coded signs was introduced along the four climbing trails, epitomizing the new spirit of cooperation. However, more research is needed to verify if the new partnership can extend the collaboration from trail signs to incorporate broader provision of visitor services, and now that the ‘carrot’ of inscription has been achieved, the multi-stakeholder momentum may be difficult to maintain.

KEYWORDS:

• Trail signs
• world heritage sites
• national parks
• stakeholder collaboration
• Mount Fuji

Acknowledgements

Thanks to AK, KY and the PREC Institute Inc. Also to many other professional contacts and peers who contributed to this paper, and to JSPS Grant No. 26760023 and 15H03274.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Originally passed in 1957 and amended in 1970 following the establishment of the Environment Agency (Imura, 2005).

2. The MOE’s land ownership amounts to a mere 0.2% of all national parks in Japan (Katō, 2008, p. 23).

3. Including the three previously listed natural WHSs of Shiretoko, Shirakami and Yakushima, but not Ogasawara which was added to the list in 2013.

4. For example, the number of people engaged in forestry decreased from 450,000 (1960) to 50,000 (2005), while the ratio of those aged over 65 increased from 5% to 27% (Matsumoto, 2013).

5. The MLIT emerged from a 2001 amalgamation of the Construction and Transport Ministries that was intended to further decentralization but ‘actually had the opposite effect’ (Feldhoff, 2002).

6. This amounted to some JPY10 trillion, equivalent to US$100 billion in FY2000 (Feldhoff, 2002).

7. The Fuji-san Oyobi Shūhen Bika Seisō Katsudō in Yamanashi and the Fuji-san wo Itsumade mo Utsukushiku Suru Kai in Shizuoka Prefectures respectively.

8. http://www.pref.shizuoka.jp/a_content/trend/2009_07_03.html.

9. An island located between Kyushu and Okinawa listed as a natural WHS in 1993.

10. Oman’s Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in 2007 and Dresden’s Elbe River Valley in 2009.