Lovers of World Famous Something

The Japanese are vulnerable to authority. Much ado over the selection of World Heritage showed that. Mt. Fuji was nominated as the candidate for World Cultural Heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, while Kamakura city was dropped. The reason why the Japanese are so enthusiastic about it is because they recognize the United Nations as world bureaucracy. Upholding bureaucracy would be appreciated by the bureaucracy in Japan. As a matter of fact, the World Heritage is nothing more than a list of places to go before you die.

The government of Japan has been working hard to make Mt. Fuji listed of the World Natural Heritage for decades. But, UNESCO has been dismissing Japan’s request, because the nature of Fuji has not been preserved well, with scattered trash and garbage of hikers. It hurt the fragile pride of some bureaucrats, who had badly been regarding Japan as the number one in the world, because Mt. Fuji, known in overseas as Fujiyama, had been one of the symbols of Japan, just like Uncle Sam for Americans.

So, Japanese bureaucrats made their mind to let Fuji nominated as the World Cultural Heritage, selling it as psychological basis for the nation. To encourage the concept, they included Miho no Matsubara, a sand bar in the Pacific coast from where many famous painters drew picture of Fuji, in the cultural heritage related to Fuji. This strategy was too complicated for foreigners to be understood. Miho no Matsubara was excluded from the registration, mainly because it was geographically too far to be included in the Fuji area. The government still insists on including it in the registration.

It still is unclear what was the purpose of the registration. If the bureaucrats were working for fulfilling their own pride, it should be wasting of time and resource. The local governments around Mt. Fuji welcome the registration as an opportunity of more travelers from everywhere in the world. More travelers, however, may cause further mess in the environment of the mountain. Its maintenance may cost a lot of money as it has never been before.

The Japanese like authorization of some well-known international organization, such as the International Olympic Committee, Nobel Foundation or World Baseball Classic. Having good result in those contests may sometimes become a national goal, confusing that those athletes or scientists would give people a fantasy. The Prime Minister of Japan often takes advantage of that kind of nationalism for his political benefit by giving the National Honor Awards. It is ironically an effusion of their sense of inferiority in world community.