History and Social Background of the Designation of Yakushima Island in Kagoshima as a National Park

Abstract

This paper shows the social background of the designation of Yakushima Island as national park. Yakushima Island including Iwo Island was planned as Yakushima National Park separated from Kirishima National Park and Kinko-Wan Quasi-national Park at first. However there were difficult problems such as the forestry for National forest etc. to designate as the national park. After that, the policy was changed along the trend of the national sight-seeing policies and the situation of the national park designation which was to attach another neighboring area to a former designated national park and renew it. In the meanwhile the adjustment to the forestry for National forest was going to good direction, and to designate Iwo Island where sulfur mining had been developed as national park was given up because the adjustment was at a deadlock and it was necessary to avoid taking any more time for its national park's designation. After all, the adjustment to the development of the hydroelectric power generation was going to the good condition and hoping all park area would be used widely, Yakushima Island with Kinko-Wan Quasi-national Park was added to Kirishima National Park.