2023-09-10 15:42:58
Congested trails, threat to the environment and risks for the safety of hikers: the influx of visitors to Mount Fuji, the emblematic Japanese volcano classified as a World Heritage Site, worries local authorities, powerless to stem the phenomenon.
“Several times I told myself that it was becoming dangerous,” confides this 22-year-old Japanese student.
Relatively accessible, Mount Fuji, whose famous conical silhouette is visible on a clear day from Tokyo, regarding a hundred kilometers away, is a victim of its success in the same way as other sites distinguished by UNESCO, such as the Italian city of Venice or Bruges in Belgium.
“I think Mount Fuji is one of the prides of Japan,” says Marina Someya, a 28-year-old Japanese woman on her way to the summit, also noting that “there are a lot of people, and a lot of foreigners.” on the slopes of the volcano for this first hiking season – the trails are only open in summer – since the reopening of the Japanese borders following the Covid-19 crisis.
“Mount Fuji cries for help”
The UNESCO listing of the Japanese site in 2013 was accompanied by recommendations to control the flow of hikers. In vain: the number of visitors to the foot of its trails has more than doubled since 2012 to approach 5.1 million people in 2019, according to the authorities of Yamanashi, one of the two departments that Mount Fuji straddles.
With the crowds, the pressure on the environment has gradually increased, with massive use of electricity generators running on diesel and daily parades of trucks transporting water and evacuating mountains of waste.
“Mount Fuji is crying for help,” summed up the governor of Yamanashi, Kotaro Nagasaki, last week.
If the department has prohibited access to the foot of the volcano trail for individual gasoline-powered vehicles, an almost uninterrupted flow of coaches – 90 each day on average this year in July and August – pours streams of visitors there.
Overtourism worries the whole of Japan
The infrastructures welcoming hikers “go once morest the spiritual atmosphere of the mountain”, notes the UNESCO presentation dedicated to Mount Fuji.
The department anticipates attendance slightly below that of 2019 this year, but is considering for the future a railway project which would be installed on the existing road, the only way according to it to truly regulate access.
Beyond the case of Mount Fuji, the Japanese government is concerned regarding the consequences of overtourism throughout the country as foreign visitors have returned to levels close to pre-pandemic, and said this week it was planning measures “from the fall” to deal with it.
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