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.
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