Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is a stratovolcano that straddles the border between Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. An active volcano that stands 3,776 meters high, Mount Fuji is the tallest mountain in Japan. Because it rises up from a low elevation, the mountain body itself has great height, and it has a huge base with a diameter of 35 to 40 kilometers. On the southeastern slope is Mount Hoei’s exploded eruption crater, which formed in an explosion in 1707 and changed the appearance of the mountain. While the mountain is made up of basaltic lava flows, volcanic ash, and volcanic gravel, the lava is highly fluid, creating large lava flow fields like Aoki-gahara on the northwest slope. Dammed lakes like the Fuji Five Lakes and lava tubes like the Saiko Bat Hole and Narusawa Ice Cave have also formed. Mount Fuji’s volcanic history is divided into before and after the inactive period, which lasted from approximately 10,000 to 5,000 years before the present. Before the inactive period, the mountain remained active for at least 70,000 years, resulting in a volcano over 3,000 meters tall called Old Fuji. In historic times, the volcano was recorded to have erupted over 10 times between 781 and 1707. Of these eruptions, the three most notable took place in the years 800, 864, and 1707. Since 1707, however, no known activity has been recorded. Mount Fuji today is already in a period of dissection, and radial valleys are appearing on the mountainsides. Among such valleys, the Osawa valley on the western slope is the largest, with an area of erosion called the Osawa collapse at the top of the valley that is about 11 kilometers long with a maximum width of 500 meters.

In the Man’yoshu (an ancient imperial anthology of Japanese poetry), Akahito Yamabe wrote of the sacredness of Mount Fuji as follows: “Since the heavens and earth parted, it has stood, godlike, lofty, and noble.” Saigyo, who visited the Kanto region in mid-12th century, has a poem in Sanka shu (Poems of a Mountain Hermitage) with these words: “Trailing in the wind, the smoke from Mount Fuji fades in the sky, moving like my thoughts toward some unknown end.” Many people in Medieval Japan who traveled the Tokaido highway wrote of Mount Fuji in poems and travelogues. As the mountain was also an object of worship, there are legends of Shotoku Taishi and En no Gyoja making pilgrimage climbs. It is said that the practice of worshipping Mount Fuji spread to eastern Japan in medieval times. In the Edo period, many Fuji confraternities formed around the country led by Fuji pilgrimage leaders and oshi (who serve guests), and climbing Mount Fuji became very popular. Serving as centers for these pilgrimages were the Sengen Shrines (shrines for worshiping volcanoes), located in places like Omiya of Suruga Province (present-day Shizuoka Prefecture) and Murayama, Subashiri, and Yoshida of Kai Province (present-day Yamanashi Prefecture). As the subject matter in art in the early modern period, Mount Fuji was depicted in Southern School paintings by Taiga Ikeno and Buson Yosa, as well as in ukiyo-e paintings by Hokusai Katsushika and Hiroshige Utagawa.

Today, the starting points for climbing the mountain are located at Gotenba-guchi, Subashiri-guchi, Fujinomiya-guchi, and Yoshida-guchi. A bus takes visitors to the second through fifth stations, and the Subaru Line runs from Lake Kawaguchi to the fifth station. At the summit are a weather station and an inner shrine of Mount Fujisan Hongu Sengen Grand Shrine, located in Fujinomiya City in Shizuoka Prefecture. The entire mountain is designated as a Special Place of Scenic Beauty by the Japanese government and is part of the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park system. In 2013 Mount Fuji was recognized as a World Cultural Heritage Site, with the designation “Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration.” The area on the mountain at the eighth station and above, with the exception of the climbing trails, is the private property of Fujisan Hongu Sengentaisha Grand Shrine, and the borders of prefectures and municipalities remain undefined.