Hakusan

Hakusan National Park extends across central Honshu, straddling the prefectures of Ishikawa, Toyama, Gifu and Fukui, on the Sea of Japan side. It was first designated Hakusan Quasi-National Park in 1955 and gained full national park status in 1962. Its centre is Mount Haku, a volcano of 2,702 metres with eight craters near the summit, among them Lake Senjaga, frozen all year round.

Hakusan is the westernmost mountain in Japan with an alpine zone, and that gives it a particular botanical value: it displays a complete altitudinal zonation, from the warm temperate belt to the alpine. The base is covered by coniferous forests dominated by Abies mariesii, pines and Japanese cedar along the Tedori River, followed by deciduous forests of Mongolian oak and Japanese beech, and above them alpine scrub and grassland, with a notable endemic flora at the higher levels.

It is one of the three most sacred mountains in Japan, alongside Fuji and Tateyama, and that status has shaped settlement: around the shrines and temples tied to its cult grew communities of monks and villages that lodged pilgrims and that produced and distributed medicinal herbs and amulets. In 1980 the park's territory, some 480 km², was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, one of Japan's first four alongside Shiga Kogen, Odaigahara-Omine and Yakushima. The designation was processed by local authorities with hardly any knowledge among residents and remained practically inactive for more than thirty years; it was revived from 2010 with the addition of transition zones, reaching today's 199,329 hectares and some 17,000 inhabitants. The main management concern today is demographic: ageing and the departure of young people to the cities threaten to erase the ways of life tied to natural resources and the traditional cultures of these valleys.