The purpose of this research was to discuss the political situation associated with Tsuyoshi Tamura during the selection process of notational parks. The research subject was the political process to establish the National Parks Law. In particular, this paper focused the discussion of the National Parks Law at the Imperial Diet; then the characteristics of Japan's national parks have been examined. In this paper, establishment of national parks was considered as one of the policies and has been analyzed from the following three perspectives:
1) National parks had a function to expand local interests
2) The 59th Imperial Diet was not only an opportunity for the two major parties, Constitutional Democratic Party (hereinafter “CDP”) and Constitutional Association of Political Friendship (hereinafter “CAPF”), to discuss the policy regarding national parks, but also the opportunity which CAPF criticized CDP's Interior Minister, Kenzo Adachi.
3) As national parks could influence local interests, conflicting local interests surrounding national parks existed within each political party. Thus, these conflicting interests were reflected during a discussion at the Imperial Diet.
As a result of this analysis, it was uncovered that the idea of national parks was never clarified even between the two major parties based on the discussion at the national parks bill committee. The actual discussion point of the national parks bill committee was for CAPF to strike CDP and Adachi and also to prevent CDP from exploiting the national park idea for the election. The councilors who belong to CAPF actually had a hidden agenda to establish national parks in their supporting regions, while criticizing CDP's utilization of national parks for their political purposes. However, as they all try to develop the fundamentals of national parks based on their own interest to promote them within each of their constituency, even within CAPF, the vision of national parks was not consistent in the following points: the objective of national parks, locations, the scale of the area, conservation policies, utilization, and strictness of regulations. It has been revealed that the Imperial Diet thus did not function as a place to discuss national park ideas further.
Due to the conflict between the two major political parties, Tsuyoshi Tamura was appointed to provide scholarly objectivity to the selection results of national parks.
According to the analysis of the reasons for submission of the National Parks Law bill, urgent issues were raised such as the legal protection of industrial development like hydroelectric power, and the protection and control by National Park Plans against unsystematic tourism development. On the other hand, utilization development and visitor promotion were not specified as an imminent goal, and these were positioned as an overall large-scale purpose driven by national parks. Policy menus regarding international tourism did not exist; therefore, cooperation with the Ministry of Railways also did not exist. In addition, cooperation with the Ministry of Education did not exist. Taking all of the above into consideration, this bill was submitted only for the imminent purpose of protection and control of natural landscape.
