Mount Fuji Suffers from Barbaric Tourism, Barrier is Built

After Venice, which introduced €5 tickets to limit the number of tourists visiting Italy’s most famous city for one day, SOS comes from Japan, where hundreds of people gather at a certain spot every day to take pictures of Mount Fuji. The trend among tourists and bloggers went viral after a foreign influencer published a photo of the sacred Japanese mountain and UNESCO World Heritage Site, seen behind a Lawson’s chain store in autumn of 2022.

Since then, every day the spot in the middle of the road, from where the viral photo was taken, attracts crowds of beginning photographers and tourists who obstruct traffic, disturb locals, and leave huge amounts of garbage. The municipal government of Fuji Kawaguchiko City in Yamanashi Prefecture has received several reports of blocked access to sidewalks due to excessive crowding and debris. In March, the municipality posted signs in English, Chinese, and Thai urging people to stop illegal parking and not to leave trash on the sidewalk. A security guard has even been posted at the site, but with no tangible result, as hundreds of visitors continue to gather in the middle of the street every day to take photos in spite of passing cars, with constant danger of collisions.

And after all the measures to ensure the safety of the place and the peace of mind of the residents of Fuji Kawaguchiko went unheeded, it was time for a “painful but radical decision” by the local government, which ordered the construction of a steel barrier along the road to block the view of Mount Fuji. In addition to the three-meter-high steel barriers preventing people from crossing the road, a giant opaque plastic sheet was decided to be spread in front of the minimarket. “We wanted foreign visitors to enjoy the view, but bad behavior continues to grow every day,” said Fuji Kawaguchiko City Tourism Minister Masakazu Togawa, explaining the draconian measures.