National Parks and National Identity: An Instance of the Birth of Yellowstone National Park Toshinori TANAKA Since around 1970, the concept of nature conservation has been changed by the emergence of new ideas such as 'eco-system' and 'biodiversity' and of several global conventions like World Heritage and Ramsar. Since then, the nature conservation governance has been likely to be multi-layered in conjunction with local ordinances, domestic laws, and global pacts. The biggest change here is that, in some countries, National Park system has been less represented by the emergence of new ideas and global pacts. 'Some countries' here means historical countries such as Japan and Europe contrasting 'young countries' like New World countries and developing countries, for example, the United States and Canada. You can see this contrast clearly in World Heritage List. This clear difference seems to be based on the relationship between National Parks and national identity. I propose a thesis that 'younger countries are to reflect national identities to their national parks and historical countries are mostly opposite.' Consequently, this thesis aims to appeal that National Parks in the Unites States are strongly tied to national identity, giving an instance of Yellowstone National Park which is the first national parks in the world. There have been several important discourses that depicted the causes of birth of Yellowstone, however, they are not organized well enough. This thesis picks up Roderick Nash, Alfred Runte and Richard West Sellars and aims to organize their discourses underlining the presence of American Nationalism mentioning American cultural inferiority complex to Europe. Wilderness such as Yellowstone and Yosemite played very important roles to satisfy the demand for their national pride. Yellowstone, backed by strong current of nationalism, becomes a first National Park in 1872 and is memorized as an 'ideal' national park over a century.