 The
Kobe
municipal government is hoping to boost tourism on Mt. Rokko and its
environs by showcasing its light-emitting mushrooms and opening a
cemetery for foreign residents to the public for the first time in
40 years.
There are also plans to offer a Mt. Rokko exam, aimed at
increasing interest in the area.
According to the government, the city attracted 24.4 million
tourists in 1994, but the number plummeted in the aftermath of the
1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake.
In 2004, the city's tourism industry showed renewed
vitality--reaching 23.2 million, excluding visitors to the year-end
Kobe Luminarie and other special events. However, tourism in the
region encompassing Mt. Rokko and Mt. Maya has been slower to
recover.
Therefore, the city is promoting the area this fiscal year as
part of celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Mt. Rokko's
inclusion in Seto Inland Sea National Park.
 Twice
a month, from April to June, the city will open the municipal
foreign cemetery that was built in 1961 in the Futatabi Park in Kita
Ward.
The cemetery, which is known for its scenic beauty and exotic
touches, has 2,690 gravestones of such noted foreigners as E.H.
Hunter, a wealthy Briton who set up a shipbuilding and ironworks in
Osaka in the early Meiji period (1868-1912), and Feodor Morozoff,
who founded a Western confectionery firm.
Although there have been many requests to tour the cemetery, it
has only been open to the families of the deceased, as gravestones
had been defaced when the park was previously open to the public.
At the Kobe Municipal Arboretum about 1.5 kilometers north of the
cemetery, Mycena lux-coeli, a type of light-emitting mushroom grows
wild.
The mushrooms glow with a yellowish green light beginning in the
rainy season as luciferin, a light-emitting substance, is oxidized.
The diameter of the mushroom's cap and the length of its stem
measure two centimeters each. There are only a few places in Japan
where the light-emitting mushrooms grow, including Hachijojima
island off
Tokyo,
where they have become a popular nighttime tourism attraction.
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