THE STORIES ABOUT CULTURAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN FOREIGN COUNTRIES AND KYUSHU

Unzen: A Summer Resort for Westerners Living in East Asia

Mt. Unzen in Nagasaki Prefecture was introduced to Europe by men such as Engelbert Kaempfer and Philipp Franz Balthasar von Siebold, and came to be widely known overseas.
After the opening of Japan, Europeans and Americans living in East Asia began using a Shanghai-Nagasaki route connecting China and Japan to visit Mt. Unzen and beat the heat of summer. Western-style hotels aimed at non-Japanese and hotels for non-Japanese only opened there.
After the First Sino-Japanese War, the number of Russians traveling from Harbin and Vladivostok to escape the summer heat grew, and Japan’s first prefectural park was opened there. In the Taisho period, a prefectural golf course and tennis court were built, and in 1934 an area around Mt. Unzen was designated Japan’s first national park.

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