Tokyo:
With its millions of visitors each year and its buses, supply trucks, noodle shops and fridge magnets, Japan’s Mount Fuji is no longer the peaceful place of pilgrimage it once was.
Now authorities have had enough, saying the number of hikers climbing the world-famous volcano day and night is dangerous and an environmental disgrace.
“Mount Fuji is screaming,” the governor of the local region said last week.
Due to its religious importance and inspiration for artists, UNESCO added the “internationally recognized icon of Japan” to its World Heritage List in 2013.
But as has happened in places like Bruges in Belgium or Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro, the designation has been both a blessing and a curse.
Visitor numbers more than doubled between 2012 and 2019 to 5.1 million, and that’s just for Yamanashi Prefecture, the main entry point.
Day and night
It’s not just during the day that a stream of people trudge through the black volcanic grit on their way to the 3,776-meter mountain.
At night, long lines of people – on their way up to see the sun rise in the morning – pull up with torches on their heads.
The main starting point is a parking lot that can only be reached by taxi or bus that takes a few hours from Tokyo, about 100 kilometers away.
Greeting visitors is a complex of restaurants and shops that sell souvenirs, snacks and drinks for hikers before they set off.
They are powered by diesel generators and the thousands of liters of water they use have to be delivered in trucks. Trucks also take down all the waste.
“I saw a lot of food waste and empty drink bottles lying around in the handwashing area of the toilet,” complained Japanese hiker Yuzuki Uemura (28).
Hazards
Masatake Izumi, a local official, said the large number of people increases the risk of accidents.
Some people who climb at night “get hypothermia and have to be taken back to the first aid posts,” he told AFP.
At least one person has died so far this season.
For an optional entrance fee of 1,000 yen ($6.80), visitors receive a booklet in Japanese (there is a QR code for the English version) with some dos and don’ts.
But some don’t realize the arduous five to six hour climb to the top, where oxygen levels are lower and the weather can change quickly.
“It’s almost winter there, it’s really cold,” Rasyidah Hanan, a 30-year-old hiker from Malaysia, told AFP on the way.
“People have to be filtered a bit because some people weren’t ready to climb Mount Fuji. They were wearing very light clothes… Some of them looked really sick.”
Crowd control
With tourist numbers returning to pre-pandemic levels, it’s not just Mount Fuji whose returning crowds are worrying authorities.
This week, government ministers met to discuss measures to address what Kenji Hamamoto, a senior Japan Tourism Agency official, called “overcrowding and etiquette violations” in high-traffic locations.
For Mount Fuji, authorities announced last month that they would for the first time take measures to control crowds if the trails became too crowded.
The announcement alone had an effect, and ultimately no such measures were taken, Izumi said.
Visitor numbers are expected to fall slightly this year compared to 2019, but could rise again in 2024 as tourists – especially from China – return.
Yamanashi’s governor Kotaro Nagasaki said last week that Japan should take steps to ensure Mount Fuji does not lose its UNESCO status.
One solution, he says, could be to build a light rail system to replace the main road that leads to the main starting point for hikers.
“We believe that a shift from a quantity-based approach to a quality-based approach to tourism on Mount Fuji is essential,” said Nagasaki.
“I think Mount Fuji is one of the things Japan is proud of,” says Marina Someya, 28, a Japanese hiker.
“There are many people, and many foreigners.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published through a syndicated feed.)