Apart of the 14 sites already registered on UNESCO World Heritage List (comprising 11 cultural and 3 natural sites), Japan has already submitted 8 new sites on the UNESCO tentative list. Each country is allowed to submit such list, which is an inventory of its cultural and natural sites; this list can be updated every year. Then, each country can nominate one of several sites from his tentative list to request their registration on the World Heritage site. A long process starts at that time, which can be concluded by its acceptance or rejection.

At this time, Japan has 8 sites on his tentative list. Those are :


* Temples, Shrines and other structures of Ancient Kamakura (1995)
* Hikone-Jo (castle) (1995)
* Historic Monuments and Sites of Hiraizumi (2001)
* The Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Industrial Heritage (2007)
* Ogasawara Islands (2007)
* Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasaki (2007)
* Asuka-Fujiwara: Archaeological sites of Japan’s Ancient Capitals and Related Properties (2007)
* Fujisan (2007)



source : whc.unesco.org/en/etatsparties/jp

Some of those sites will perhaps never be registered on the UNESCO list. While some, like Ogasawara Islands, should have no specific problem, the situation is far more complicated for Mount Fuji, mostly because of the bad influence the humans had on the mountain (over-development, pollution).

This tentative list has recently grown up a lot: 5 of the candidates were added in 2007...


All candidates from all around the world on this site : www.worldheritagesite.org/alltentative.html