youth hostel and park headquarters building, and is traversed by a scenic roadway and several walking trails. Events include a fireworks festival in July, a “Karst Walk” in November, and an annual burning off of dry grasses in February called “Yamayaki”.
Geology
The plateau consists of uplifted reef
limestones of
Paleozoic age, which were thickened by
overfolding during the Akiyoshidai orogenic movement. Subsequent erosion has created an undulating
karst
Karst is a topography formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. It is characterized by underground drainage systems with sinkholes and caves. It has also been documented for more weathering-resistant ro ...
landscape dimpled with many
dolines and countless limestone pinnacles up to two meters in height. Beneath the surface lie hundreds of caves, a few of them quite significant geologically. Numerous fossils of
Pleistocene age have been found in these caves, including those of the Japanese
rhinoceros,
Stegodont elephant,
Naumann elephant, Young
tiger, and many other animals from the last interglacial period.
The area around Akiyoshidai was heavily forested about 500,000 years ago. In the
Jōmon period
The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between 6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...
, with the general area serving as a hunting ground and the bottoms of
sinkholes as vegetable fields. Numerous
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
artifacts have been recovered. As farming started in Japan the local people eventually entirely replaced the forested landscape with
Japanese pampas grass for feeding their animals and thatching houses. Repeated cycles of burning the grass have kept trees from growing back since.
Akiyoshidō
Towards the southern end of Akiyoshidai is the Akiyoshidō
cave, named by
Emperor Hirohito on May 30, 1926, when he was still
crown prince. This spacious cave is up to 100 meters wide and has 8.79 kilometers of passages, making it one of the longest in Japan after
Akkadō cave, and one of the longest in Asia. At the present time an about one-kilometer-long section of the cave is open to the public as a sightseeing course, with a walkway and bridge system, entering at the cave's lowest point and exiting via an artificial elevator. This portion of the cave is also well decorated with a variety of large and colorful
speleothems.
Gallery
Image:Gold Column at Akiyoshi Cave.jpg, Stalactite called "Gold Column"
Image:Akiyoshidai_001.jpg, View of Karst landscape
Image:Akiyoshidai-Syuhodou.jpg, Inside Akiyoshidō caves
Image:Karst topography at Akiyoshidai.jpg, View of Karst topography
See also
*
List of national parks of Japan
*
Ramsar sites in Japan
References
*Southerland, Mary and Britton, Dorothy. ''The National Parks of Japan''. Kodansha International (1995).
*Stanley, George D. ''The History and Sedimentology of Ancient Reef Systems.'' Springer (2001).
*Okada, Hakuyu. ''The Evolution of Classic Sedimentology''. Dunedin Academic Press (2005)
*Waltham, Tony. ''Great Caves of the World''. Firefly Books (2001).
External links
Akiyoshidai Natural History Museum website
{{authority control
Plateaus of Japan
Natural monuments of Japan
Parks and gardens in Yamaguchi Prefecture
National parks of Japan
Caves of Japan
Protected areas established in 1955
1955 establishments in Japan