TOKYO, Sept 27 Kyodo - The Japanese government has picked five more places as candidates for cultural heritage sites to be registered on the World Heritage list by UNESCO, bringing the number of such candidates to 13, the Cultural Affairs Agency said Friday.
Among the five is Niigata Prefecture's Sado Island in the Sea of Japan that is known for having had one of the world's largest gold and silver mines during the Edo period in the 17th to 19th centuries.
The four others include a group of historic monuments in Hokkaido and the northern Tohoku region in the prehistoric Jomon period which includes the Sannai Maruyama settlement site in Aomori Prefecture, and the Mozu-Furuichi group of mausoleums in Osaka Prefecture, which includes one of the world's largest keyhole-shaped tomb mounds.
The remaining two are a group of industrial modernization sites in Kyushu and Yamaguchi Prefecture, and Okinoshima Island in Fukuoka Prefecture, which served as a key transit point for trade between Japan and the Chinese continent in the 4th to 10th centuries.
The five candidates were picked out of the 32 places recommended by local governments across the country, agency officials said.
The culture agency said it has put some conditions on those candidate sites to improve their chances to be registered as World Heritage sites.
The officials said the agency has called for Sado Island to be united with the Iwami silver mine in Shimane Prefecture, which has already been listed as a World Cultural Heritage site.
It also asked that more historic ruins in other parts of eastern Japan be added to the group of monuments in Hokkaido and the Tohoku region and urged municipalities in and around the Mozu-Furuichi group of mausoleums to improve its conservation and management system.
The officials said the agency placed those conditions after the UNESCO World Heritage Committee in July put off registration of the landscape around the ancient town of Hiraizumi, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, citing a lack of credentials for a World Heritage site.
The agency plans to add four of the five candidate sites, excluding the Mozu-Furuichi group of mausoleums, to its provisional list of recommendations for registration by the end of the year, the officials said.
The Japanese government has already shortlisted eight candidate sites for registration by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Among the eight are Hiraizumi and the Tomioka Silk Mill, which symbolizes Japan's industrial modernization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Currently, Japan has 11 sites registered as World Cultural Heritage sites and three as World Natural Heritage sites.
Among the 11 cultural sites are Buddhist monuments in the Horyuji Temple area in Nara Prefecture and the atomic bomb dome in Hiroshima.
The three natural sites are Yaku Island in Kagoshima Prefecture, the Shirakami mountains in the Tohoku region and Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula. (Kyodo)
Today In Asia : Last Update : 10:33:47 27 September 2008 (GMT+7:00)
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