Abstract
This paper covers the historical background to the process leading to Lake Biwa being designated as the first Quasi-National Park area in Japan in 1950, not as a National Park area, and the relationship with the reclamation work that was carried out on lagoons around Lake Biwa from 1942 to 1971. Lake Biwa is the biggest lake in Japan and it formerly had more than 40 lagoons on which thousands of migratory waterfowl rested and where reed wetlands and small islands with pine and evergreen trees could be seen. At present only one-seventh of the original area of these lagoons remains. Poets, travelers and court nobles from the Kyoto capital have written about the beauty of this lake scenery in Tanka poems since the seventh century. In 1943 the government of Japan decided to designate Lake Biwa as a National Park, but changed its policy in 1949, on revising the National Parks Law. At that time some provisions, including the provision concerning the designation of Quasi-National Park areas, were enacted. Accordingly, areas with diminished landscape quality could only be designated as Quasi-National Parks, not as National Parks. In Lake Biwa’s case, it was the reclamation work on lagoons around the lake that caused diminishment of the landscape quality. This was the result of the Yodo River Control Project planned in 1943 and carried out around Lake Biwa and its vicinities during World War Two. Lake Biwa is part of the Yodo River which flows eventually to Osaka.
