The Area Determination and the Evaluation of Grasslands Landscape in Aso-Kuju National Park when it was Designated as a National Park.

Abstract

The Aso-Kuju National Park has established in 1934, which is one of the oldest national parks in Japan. The distinctive features of the Park is magnificent grasslands landscape. In this study we investigated empirical studies, articles, governmental documents, and minutes of the Imperial Diet during the establishment processes of the National Park (from 1920’s to 1930’s), to elucidate the evaluation of grasslands landscape, the circumstances of area determination including Kuju area and Aso caldera, and the relationship between grasslands evaluation and area determination at the establishment of The Aso-Kuju National Park. As a result we found the followings, 1) the importance of grasslands landscape was recognized first by Nakagoshi who investigated Aso in 1927, 2) after that Tamura also investigated Aso and found the significance of utilize grasslands landscape by driving, 3) the idea by Tamura to use successive grasslands landscape between Aso and Kuju by driving led the Oita Prefectural district to admit the National Park area, 4) on the other hand the grasslands area which could not be expected to utilize were excluded from the National Park area.