Changes in landscape planning and land management in Arashiyama National Forest in Kyoto

Abstract

Arashiyama National Forest, located in the northwestern part of Kyoto city, is one of the most famous tourist sites in Japan with about 10 million visitors per year. The 59.03 ha of forest landscape attracts many people throughout Japan and abroad for its beautiful combinations of cherry blossom, red pine and other deciduous broadleaf trees. From a historical point of view, the forests comprising Arashiyama National Forest were first treated in “unspecified” but “complex” ways, to maintain their preferable landscapes. As the Modern Ages (from 1870) began with the Japanese national government becoming the new administrator of forests, a new forest system in Japan was implemented, leading to forest management systems characterised by “specialisation” and “clarification”. In trying to maintain the ideal landscape or functions, legislations declared prohibited acts, but failed to take into account the effects of one measure upon the other, and/or failed to clarify acceptable actions. This resulted in drastic changes in forest landscape. Our purposes of study were (1) to evaluate the landscape plans and managements based on the changes within the 25 land units demarcated in the landscape management plan of 1931, and (2) to present the relationships between public awareness and landscape management in Arashiyama after the year 1255. Through our investigations and analysis, we conclude that it is very important to conserve sustainable, historical, aesthetic forest landscape, and to take each specific and clarified management objective and system as an individual piece as well as part of a whole picture. We also suggest that administrative affairs alone would not be sufficient to interact and integrate each management purpose. Restoring the cultural interactions between people and landscape is strongly needed for future local landscape planning and management.