Mount Fuji Designated as World Heritage Site

On April 30, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), an advisory body for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which carries out a preliminary assessment of its inscription on the World Heritage List, recommended Mount Fuji (Yamanashi Prefecture, Shizuoka Prefecture), which has been an object of worship and art since the ancient time, be inscribed on the World Heritage List. In response to this, on June 22, the 37^th session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which was held in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, decided to inscribe Mount Fuji on the World Heritage List as a Cultural Heritage Site. Miho no Matsubara, which had been recommended by ICOMOS for exclusion from the list because it could not be regarded as part of Mount Fuji, was also allowed to be inscribed as a constituent resource after a series of objections from member countries. As for Kamakura, the ancient capital of the samurai government, the Japanese government recommended that it be inscribed on the World Heritage List, however, it withdrew a bid to get the site from the World Heritage Committee since the ICOMOS rejected that it not be inscribed. (Japanese)