Abstract
Iriomote Island in Okinawa is now receiving a lot of attention because the National Park area was recently expanded to cover almost the entire island. Being the next promising candidate for a World Natural Heritage Site title, an investigation was conducted. The purpose of this study is to investigate the history of land use in Iriomote from the 1960s and analyze the transition as well as its sociocultural backgrounds to extract the factors that may affect land use. Land use analysis and a field research were conducted, the former was conducted by analyzing topographical map with scale 1/50,000 and aerial photographs, and the latter was conducted to obtain actual land use data. Interviews were also used to reveal historical backgrounds. The results show that the changes in land use have been mainly affected by demographic changes, this is closely related to the changes in lifestyle and culture. Significant differences found in land use between the western and the eastern parts of the island were attributed to the history of the villages.
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