Swarms of visitors on Mt. Fuji are pushing facilities to the brink, leaving mounds of trash on the mountainside and toilets out of order. Officials are now considering drastic measures to preserve the sacred mountain and UNESCO World Heritage site. - REUTERS
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00:00 Long lines, overflowing bins and broken toilets.
00:05 Scenes you might expect at a county fair, but maybe not Mount Fuji, the iconic Japanese
00:10 mountain, a sacred source of pride in the country for its symmetrical form.
00:15 However, a recent surge in inbound tourists after Japan reopened its borders has led to
00:20 extreme levels of pollution and other strains on the country's tallest peak, authorities
00:25 say.
00:26 One is Masataki Izumi, an official from Yamanashi, one of two prefectures that Fuji straddles.
00:32 "Many people are visiting Mount Fuji and we appreciate that, but that is also leading
00:37 to over-tourism with garbage and problems with the toilets resulting from the large
00:41 number of people.
00:42 We're now in a critical situation."
00:44 Mount Fuji was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site a decade ago, which only boosted its
00:49 popularity.
00:51 Though that distinction came with conditions that Japan reduce overcrowding and environmental
00:55 harm from visitors, overcrowding has only grown worse.
01:00 The largest base station on the mountain saw four million visitors this summer, a 50 percent
01:04 jump from 2013.
01:07 Social media has been rife with posts about soiled bathrooms and mounds of litter on the
01:11 hiking paths.
01:13 Authorities say they are considering drastic measures to reduce the volume.
01:17 "The biggest cause of over-tourism on Mount Fuji is that the fifth station up the mountain
01:22 can be easily reached by car.
01:24 That means we need to control that access.
01:26 However, since the Fuji-Subaru line toll road is also a prefectural road in Yamanashi, it
01:32 would be difficult to regulate it.
01:34 So we want to make a drastic change to replace the road with a mountain railway."
01:38 Another strain has been the trend of what's called "bullet climbing," where climbers attempt
01:43 to scale Fuji for sunrise and descend the same day, leading to a spike in rescue requests
01:49 of 50 percent from 2022, with over 60 so far this year, and a quarter of which have come
01:55 from non-Japanese tourists.
01:57 Unless they find ways to manage the crowds, Izumi worries the world will turn its back
02:01 on Fuji entirely.
02:03 "If things continue as they are, Mount Fuji will be abandoned by people around the world
02:08 in the near future.
02:09 If we compare it to world standard tourist destinations, Mount Fuji will be near the
02:13 bottom.
02:14 I have a strong sense of crisis right now."
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