Eastern Japan World Heritage Tour/Travel

The Shiretoko Peninsula, located on the eastern edge of Hokkaido and facing the Sea of Okhotsk, and its coastal waters are subject to registration.
The drift ice provides a habitat for large amounts of plankton and variety of fish and shellfish, including salmon, which swim upstream in the rivers of Shiretoko in autumn and are preyed upon by brown bears and white-tailed eagles. The excrement and carcasses of these animals are returned to land as nutrients for plants.
The fact that this precious natural environment, where one can see the food chain between land and sea, remains intact was recognized by the International Rengo for Conservation of Nature, and the area was registered as a World Heritage Site in 2005.

Registered as a World Cultural Site Jul. 2021
Hokkaido and Tohoku

A group of 17 ruins located in Hokkaido, Aomori Prefecture, Iwate Prefecture, and Akita Prefecture, including the Sannai-Maruyama Ruins, one of the largest prehistoric settlements in Japan. It was registered as a World Heritage Site in 2021 for its exceptional representation of human life before the advent of agriculture and its sophisticated and complex spiritual culture.

This Yamaji region stretches from Saibu of Aomori Prefecture to Saibu Akita Prefecture, and is made up of virgin beech forests that have not been altered by human hands.
The World Heritage site is divided into a central core area and a surrounding buffer zone, and these areas have been protected in their current state since being registered as a World Heritage site without modification.
There are no roads in these areas other than Yamamichi that existed before the heritage designation, and no Tsunehisa improvements are planned for the future.

The splendid Kogane Cultural Heritage Sites, including Butsukyoji and Pure Land gardens, which developed independently while absorbing the culture of the capital during the last 100 years of the Heian period, were recognized as exceptional examples of local culture in the transitional period from ancient times to the Middle Ages.
This is the first cultural heritage site to be registered in Tohoku.

It has been registered as a World Heritage Site as a relic that demonstrates a gold production system that refined traditional handicraft production techniques and an appropriate production system, and that extracted gold in accordance with the characteristics of the mine.

The Tomioka Silk Mill was built in 1872 at the request of the Meiji government and under the direction of the Frenchman Brunat.
The group of timber-framed and red brick buildings has been preserved almost exactly as it was at the time, and is an architectural gem that contributed greatly to the modernization of Japanese industry.
The factory also made a major contribution to the technological innovation and spread of the silk industry, and the entire site is a nationally designated historic site, with the early buildings designated as Important Cultural Properties.
Tomioka Silk Mill was registered as a cultural heritage site in 2014 in recognition of its contribution to the development of the silk industry through the spread of sericulture techniques overseas and the fact that the main factory facilities, built in the late 19th century, have remained almost completely intact and in good condition since the mill was founded.

The shrines and temples of Nikko were registered as a cultural heritage site in 1999 in recognition of the fact that the religious spaces that integrate the culture environment and the architectural structures clearly express Furuku Jindo thought, and that the buildings constructed from the early to mid-Edo period are of high artistic value.
The total registered area is 424 hectares, including the registered property itself (50.8 hectares) and the surrounding buffer zone.

Fujiyama has been known as the sacred mountain Fuji since ancient times, and worship of Fujiyama has been passed down. Its beautiful appearance as seen from Ochikata has been the subject of many works of art, and culture has developed amid its rich nature and beautiful scenery, becoming deeply connected to the faith and aesthetic sense of the Japanese people. As an object of faith and a source of artistic inspiration, culture landscape of Fujiyama was evaluated as something that should be registered as a World Cultural Heritage site, and was therefore registered.

The Ogasawara Islands are made up of over 30 islands scattered across a distance of approximately 400km from north to south in the Pacific Ocean, about 1000km south of Tokyo.
The results of an evaluation of the Ogasawara Islands in Jul. of last year recognized the outstanding universal value of the islands regarding their biological evolutionary process, and on May. 7th of this year, it was recommended that the islands be inscribed on the World Heritage List, and they were registered as a World Heritage Site in Jun..

Gassho-style houses are said to have originated from the installation of shelves in the attic for sericulture, which began in the Edo period. It is believed that steep thatched roofs were used to reduce the work of removing snow from heavy snowfalls and to expand the attic floor space. The three villages registered as World Heritage sites are Ogimachi in Shirakawa-go, Ainokura and Suganuma in Gokayama.