Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to identify the obstacles that disturb the yama-ate vistas remaining in Karatsu City, an old castle town originally built in the early 17th century in Japan. A thorough field survey has clarified that Karatsu has many yama-ate vistas targeting islands and mountains existing around the city, and many of the yama-ate vistas are disturbed by buildings mostly built after the War under modern city planning regulations. It is suggested that currently applied building height control is not efficient enough for yama-ate vista preservation, and well-planned, site-specific control of development location, height and volume along the vista axes should be designed and applied over Karatsu downtown to preserve and restore the historic yama-ate vistas.
