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Japan’s most famous Mt. Fuji view park cancels cherry blossom festival because of overtourism

Casey Baseel Feb 5, 2026
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In-home trespassing, public urination, and other bad manners bring an end to a local tradition.

If you’ve got even a little bit of interest in traveling in Japan, odds are that on multiple times over the past few years you’ve seen a photo taken from the exact same vantage point as the one above, with a five-story pagoda in the foreground, a grove of cherry blossom trees at its base, and off in the distance, Mt. Fuji, with its peak shrouded in snow.

It’s such a concise concentration of traditional Japanese beauty that it almost doesn’t seem real, like it’s a collage put together for anyone who needs a splash image that says “JAPAN!” for a report or presentation, but the spot where those photos are taken actually exists. Arakurayama Sengen Park is located in the town of Fujiyoshida in Yamanashi Prefecture, where a walking path leads up from the suburbs to a shrine with a viewing deck offering sweeping views that stretch, unobstructed, all the way to Japan’s tallest mountains.

Arakurayama Sengen wasn’t always a poster-park for the whole country, however. As a matter of fact, 10 years ago Fujiyoshida held the first Arakurayama Sengen Park Sakura Festival, in an attempt to drum up publicity and attract leisure-travel visitors to the area. 10 years and countless social media photos later, though, the situation has changed dramatically, and with less than two months left before the start of sakura season, the municipal government has announced that they’re cancelling this year’s cherry blossom festival.

As for why, you can probably guess from the above photo, taken during a previous Arakurayama Sengen Park Sakura Festival: overcrowding and overtourism. With around 45,000 residents, Fujiyoshida isn’t some tiny hamlet, but it’s not a big city by any means either, and the population density is pretty low. The surge in visitors, both Japanese and foreign, is funneling so many people into the neighborhood that it’s negatively affecting the people who live there. Complaints from residents regarding tourist behavior have included:

● Chronic traffic congestion
● Tourists not giving way on sidewalks, forcing children walking to/from school to walk in the street
● Trespassing on private property
● Littered cigarette butts
● Urinating or defecating in residents’ gardens
● Opening residents’ doors and entering their homes without permission to use the bathroom

▼ We’re going to need the help of a team of specialists to determine which of those last two is worse, but their preliminary stance is that they’re both appallingly asinine.

“In recent years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of domestic and foreign visitors [to the park], and harmful overtourism has gone beyond tolerable levels, deeply impacting the living environment of local residents,” says the Fujiyoshida municipal government in its statement cancelling this year’s event, with mayor Shigeru Horiuchi personally adding:

“For the city of Fujiyoshida, Mt. Fuji is not just a mere tourism resource, but a part of our lifestyle. However, the flipside of that beautiful scenery is that our residents’ peaceful lifestyles are being threatened, and I strongly feel that this has become a crisis situation. My first priority is to protect the living conditions and dignity of all of our city’s residents. For that purpose, we have made the decision, after 10 years, to bring the Sakura Festival to an end.”

It’s worth noting that the Arakurayama Sengen Park Sakura Festival wasn’t a single-day event, but rather a blanket term applied for a period of about two weeks when the sakura were in bloom. These kinds of quasi-festivals usually consist of things like an extra advertising/promotional push by the local administration and vendors selling snacks and souvenirs at the venue, resulting in an overall increase in visitors over the course of several days (Fujiyoshida has experienced an increase of around 200,000 extra visitors during its Sakura Festivals in recent years).

Also, while the canceling of the Sakura Festival means no use of the event name or associated promotion by the city government, the cherry blossoms themselves will still bloom, and the park will still be open. Even with no festival taking place, the local authorities recognize that there will still be an increase in incoming tourists once the flowers start to blossom, and so security and traffic direction staff will be deployed around the neighborhood during the first half of April, and temporary parking areas and public restrooms will be set up as well.

Finally, yes, it is ironic that in the very same press release in which Fujiyoshida is announcing “We’re cancelling the Sakura Festival because too many people have been coming,” they also included the absolutely stunning photo seen at the top of this article, showcasing the very view that’s been drawing tourists to the town. It highlights a complicated aspect of Japan’s current tourism situation, which is that locals are proud of what makes their communities special, and are, in principle, very happy to share that with visitors…as long as those visitors are considerate to the people who live there. That last part clearly hasn’t been happening in Fujiyoshida, though, as aside from traffic congestion, their complaints aren’t so much about the number of visitors as they are about the number of visitors who are acting like jerks.

The cancellation announcement of this year’s Arakurayama Sengen Park Sakura Festival doesn’t make any mention about the city council reconvening next year to discuss brining it back, so even if it’s not necessarily gone for good, it looks like it’s going into extended hiatus at the very least. As Japan’s popular sightseeing spots grow increasingly touristed, it’s going to be more and more important for visitors to remain courteous towards the surrounding community, or else we’re likely to see a rush of places coming to the same decision as Fujiyoshida did for their own local traditions.

Source: Fujiyoshida City via Norimono News via Livedoor News via Jin
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Pakutaso
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