Report on Places of Scenic Beauty and Historic Sites Designation Submitted

On June 16, the Council for Cultural Affairs submitted a report on the following places to be designated as Special Historic Site, Places of Scenic Beauty or Historic Sites to MATSUNO Hirokazu, the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The list includes Kasori Shell Mound (Chiba City), one of the largest Jōmon period settlement sites in Japan, was designated as a Special Historic Site; eleven places such as Miyakozuka Tumulus (Asuka Village, Nara Prefecture), confirmed to be an unprecedented pyramid-shaped mound, to be designated as Historic Sites; six places such as Yubatake, a source of hot spring water at Kusatsu Onsen, to be designated as Places of Scenic Beauty. The list also includes five places such as the Okinawa Prefectural Railways Yonabaru Station site, ruins of the station building of light railways that operated in Okinawa from the Taishō to wartime periods, to be selected as Registered Monuments; and the Cultural Landscape of Aso (Aso City et al, Kumamoto Prefecture); and seven landscapes such as grasslands and farming village, in the area of Mount Aso, to be selected as an Important Cultural Landscape. This was the first new designation of a Special Historic Site in seventeen years. (Japanese)