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The rich heritage of landscape history in Denmark enjoys a high degree of preservation through legislation. The new nature preservation law of 1969 is discussed in terms of its proposals for the establishment of nature parks in Denmark. Four relevance clusters — the village, the rural parish church, the landscape of enclosure, and the Bronze Age burial mound landscape — are proposed and discussed as they can contribute aspects of meaningful visible history within the recreational arena of the Danish nature park.

In December, 1962, during a brief stay in Japan I visited the north island of Hokkaido in order to see the Japanese Cranes which are carefully preserved near the seaport of Kushiro. A forty minute bus ride takes you to the nature park where five cranes which have been pinioned are enclosed in an area of grass and brushwood enclosed by a high fence. Another forty minutes by bus takes you further up the river valley to the neighbourhood of the small town of Akan. On farms in this area I saw thirty-three of the wild cranes. A recent census put the total for the whole crane population at 186 birds for the whole island.