Setonaikai

Setonaikai National Park was declared in 1934, in the first group of Japanese national parks, and protects the Seto Inland Sea, the body of water separating Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. It is an atypical park in its structure: it is not a continuous territory but a scattered set of islands, stretches of coast and viewpoints spread across a dozen prefectures, which makes it the most geographically dispersed national park in Japan.

The inland sea is dotted with hundreds of gently contoured islands and islets, covered in coastal pine woods and cultivation terraces, between narrow channels where the tides generate powerful currents, such as the famous whirlpools of Naruto. It is a landscape shaped by people for millennia, with fishing ports, historic salt works, shipyards and a shipping network that was for centuries the country's main artery of communication. The Itsukushima shrine, with its torii standing in the water on the island of Miyajima, lies within the park's scope and is separately inscribed on the World Heritage List as a cultural property.

Its natural value coexists with very high human pressure: the shores of the inland sea concentrate industrial cities and a considerable population density, and water quality and the conservation of the seabed have been a cause of concern for decades. A population of finless porpoise lives in its waters, and the shallow bottoms, the seagrass meadows and the beaches preserve communities of interest despite the transformation of the coast.