Photo/Illutration Sightseeing buses and passenger cars are parked in the Seseragi Koen park’s parking lot in Shirakawa, Gifu Prefecture, on March 5. (Yoshihiro Ogino)

SHIRAKAWA, Gifu Prefecture--The Shirakawa village office will raise fees at municipal parking lots on Oct. 1 in hopes of thinning out the crowds of tourists here, which is part of a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The village assembly in early March approved revisions of an ordinance concerning public parking lots during a regular session.

The municipality operates three parking lots that can hold about 820 cars, including the Seseragi Koen park’s parking lot near a settlement famed for “gassho-zukuri” steep-roofed homes.

The parking fee for large buses and microbuses will increase to 10,000 yen ($67) from the current 3,000 yen per vehicle.

The fee for standard-sized cars and minicars will double to 2,000 yen from 1,000 yen, while the price for two-wheel vehicles will rise to 500 yen from 200 yen.

In 2024, 233,000 standard-sized cars and minicars used the parking lots, up 20 percent over the previous record set in 2019, as well as 24,000 buses.

Nearby National Route 156 is heavily congested during the year-end and other holiday periods, affecting the daily lives of residents.

The village office plans to use revenues from the fee hikes to cover growing management costs and large-scale repairs of the facilities, in addition to conserving the landscape of the gassho-zukuri settlement.

The settlement is part of the Historic Villages of Shirakawago and Gokayama, Toyama Prefecture, that were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995.

The Shirakawa government has also revealed that it is considering introducing extra charges during consecutive holidays, the midsummer “obon” season, other busy times, and the winter months.

One assembly member said it remained uncertain if the fee revision alone could solve the congestion problem.

“I think we eventually have no choice but to control the total number (of vehicles), but we want to proceed one step at a time,” Mayor Shigeru Narihara told The Asahi Shimbun.

The municipality also approved a related draft ordinance to raise the fee for the Shirakawago Bus Terminal in April from 160 yen to 1,500 yen per bus for fixed-route services.

The increased revenues will be used for safety management of the terminal, which is often crowded with inbound tourists, the expansion of the waiting room and other purposes.

The terminal is used by nine bus operators connecting the village with Nagoya, Takayama in Gifu Prefecture, Kanazawa, and elsewhere.

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