Mount Fuji overcrowding

Fujiyoshida has canceled its 2026 cherry blossom festival at Arakurayama Sengen Park after years of crowding around one of Japan’s best-known Mount Fuji photo spots. (fujiyoshida.net) The city said on February 3 that the festival, which had drawn about 200,000 visitors a year, would not be held this spring. Officials said surging tourism was disrupting daily life and that limiting concentrated visitor flows had become a priority. (city.fujiyoshida.yamanashi.jp) The pressure is most visible at the overlook above Chureito Pagoda, where visitors climb 398 steps for the postcard view of cherry blossoms, the pagoda and Mount Fuji. Fujiyoshida’s tourism site says the park logged 1.58 million visitors in 2025, including 210,583 people during the 18-day festival period from April 1 to April 18. (fujiyoshida.net, hyperjapan.co.uk) Instead of a festival, the city kept traffic controls in place from April 1 to April 19, 2026, closed one main parking lot, shifted motorcycles to another, and opened a temporary school parking area with space for up to 600 cars on weekends. The official park page also says weekday capacity there falls to 300 cars. (fujiyoshida.net) City officials said the problem was not only crowd size but behavior in nearby neighborhoods. Their February notice cited chronic traffic jams, tourists opening private doors to use toilets, trespassing onto residential property and litter such as cigarette butts. (city.fujiyoshida.yamanashi.jp) By early April, the crowds were still coming. Channel News Asia, citing the city, reported that foreign visitors had recently topped 10,000 a day in the Fujiyoshida area, and The Orange County Register reported that the narrow streets leading to the park were packed even without the festival. (channelnewsasia.com, ocregister.com) Mayor Shigeru Horiuchi said some nuisance behavior has eased since the cancellation became widely known. Television Asahi reported on April 11 that visitor numbers were up from last year, but littering had fallen, and Horiuchi said loud behavior and trash had become “really less frequent.” (news.tv-asahi.co.jp) The city is not closing the view itself. Its English tourism page says visitors are still expected during sakura season, and the policy now is to manage access with ongoing safety measures rather than stage an event that pulls even more people into the neighborhood at once. (fujiyoshida.net) That leaves Fujiyoshida trying to preserve the same image that made the site famous: a five-story pagoda, a band of pink blossoms and snow-capped Fuji behind them. In 2026, the view remains open, but the free-for-all around it does not. (fujiyoshida.net, abcnews.com)