Congested trails, threats to the environment and risk to the safety of climbers: The influx of visitors to Mount Fuji, a Japanese volcanic landmark classified as a World Heritage Site, worries local authorities, who are powerless to prevent the phenomenon.
Near the summit, “the congestion was so unbelievable that we couldn’t go forward,” says Kogi Kariya, who recently descended the 3,776-meter Japanese mountain in an interview with AFP.
“I told myself many times that it’s getting dangerous,” says the 22-year-old Japanese student.
Relatively accessible, Mount Fuji, a conical silhouette visible on a clear day a hundred kilometers from Tokyo, has fallen victim to its own success, like the Italian city of Venice or other sites distinguished by UNESCO. Bruges in Belgium.
“I think Mt. Fuji is one of the prides of Japan,” says Marina Someya, a 28-year-old Japanese woman, adding that “there are a lot of people, a lot of foreigners.” On the slopes of the volcano for this first hiking season – since Japanese borders reopened after the Covid-19 crisis – only in summer. Lanes are open.
Since 2012, the number of visitors to Mount Fuji has doubled. [Mathias CENA – AFP]
“Mount Fuji cries for help”
In 2013 there were recommendations to limit the flow of climbers along with the UNESCO listing of the Japanese site. Vain: The number of visitors to the base of its trails has doubled since 2012, reaching 5.1 million people in 2019, according to officials at Yamanashi, one of two sectors of Mount Fuji.
With the massive use of diesel-powered electricity generators and the daily parade of trucks carrying water and dumping mountains of waste, environmental pressure has steadily increased with overcrowding.
“Mount Fuji is crying out for help,” summed up Yamanashi’s governor Kotaro Nagasaki last week.
While the department has barred access to the base of the volcano pass for private petrol vehicles, the almost uninterrupted flow of coaches – an average of 90 every day in July and August this year – has been pouring in waves of visitors there.
Over-tourism worries all of Japan
The infrastructure that welcomes climbers “goes against the spiritual environment of the mountain,” according to a UNESCO presentation dedicated to Mount Fuji.
The department expects attendance this year to be slightly lower than in 2019, but is considering a future railway project to be installed on the existing road as the only way to truly regulate access.
Beyond the Mount Fuji case, the Japanese government is concerned about the effects on tourism across the country as foreign visitors return to pre-pandemic levels, and this week said it expected “fallout” measures to deal with it.
>> Read More: A swarm of climbers on Mount Fuji worries Japanese authorities
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