Mount Fuji: Japan's sacred mountain in pilgrimage, poetry and prints

Mount Fuji explained: how the volcano formed, its 2013 UNESCO listing, Sengen shrines, Fuji-ko pilgrims, Man'yoshu poetry and climbing season.

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^{VOLCANO, PILGRIMAGE MOUNTAIN AND WORLD HERITAGE SITE}

Snow-capped volcano across a calm lake framed by cherry blossom — Mount Fuji and cherry blossom at Lake Kawaguchiko, 2010. Image: Midori, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Mount Fuji, or Fujisan, is a solitary stratovolcano about 100 km southwest of Tokyo, rising to 3,776 m, with climbing trails on both its Yamanashi and Shizuoka sides. In June 2013 UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List as "Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration", a serial property of 25 sites. The listing covers the upper mountain and its pilgrim routes together with shrines, lodging houses, springs, lakes, lava formations, a waterfall and a pine grove on the coast. Its history runs from volcanoes active over 100,000 years ago to Shinto and Buddhist worship, the Edo-period pilgrim associations known as Fuji-ko, a poem in Japan's oldest anthology and the woodblock prints that made the mountain's outline known in the West.

^{HOW WAS MOUNT FUJI FORMED?}

Aerial view of a snow-covered volcanic cone and its summit crater — Mount Fuji photographed from an aircraft, 2012. Image: Kanchi1979, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Britannica dates the formation of Fuji to the past 2.6 million years and describes the present mountain as a composite of three successive volcanoes. At the bottom is Komitake, which was surmounted by Ko-Fuji, or "Old Fuji", whose lava and ejecta later covered most of it; Shin-Fuji, "New Fuji", sits on top. A guide published by Yamanashi Prefecture's Fujisan World Heritage Division counts four, adding an older Sen-Komitake that emerged first on the northern side of the present mountain before Komitake overlapped it. The same guide places Fuji in the area where three tectonic plates overlap: the Eurasian Plate, the North American Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate.

Ko-Fuji began erupting around 100,000 years ago, and according to the Yamanashi guide a cycle of eruption and collapse continued until about 20,000 years ago. Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism dates the start of Shin-Fuji to about 10,000 years ago, when activity changed to large outflows of lava from almost the same location as Ko-Fuji's central crater. That basaltic lava covered both Komitake and Ko-Fuji and gave the mountain the form it has had since. Britannica records that Fuji has been dormant since its last eruption in 1707, while geologists still generally classify it as active. The Yamanashi guide names the eruptions of 800, 864 and 1707 as its major historical eruptions.

^{WHY IS MOUNT FUJI A WORLD HERITAGE SITE?}

Curtain of waterfalls below green forest with a snowy peak behind — Shiraito Falls and Mount Fuji, Fujinomiya, Shizuoka, 2017. Image: Big Ben in Japan, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

UNESCO inscribed Fujisan under criteria (iii) and (vi), with a property of 20,702.1 hectares and a buffer zone of 49,627.7 hectares. Under criterion (iii), the listing recognises that the mountain's form and intermittent volcanic activity gave rise to religious practices that linked Shinto and Buddhism, in which pilgrims climbed to the summit and descended again, seeking the spiritual powers of the gods and buddhas believed to live there. Criterion (vi) recognises that images of Fujisan as a solitary stratovolcano rising above lakes and sea have inspired poetry, prose and art since ancient times. UNESCO's synthesis notes that from the 12th century the mountain was a centre of training for ascetic Buddhism, which included Shinto elements.

The component sites reflect that pairing of worship and landscape. Besides the upper mountain and the pilgrim routes, they include Sengen-jinja shrines at the foot of the mountain, lodging houses that served pilgrims, lava tree moulds revered as sacred, the Oshino Hakkai springs, the Fuji Five Lakes, a waterfall and a pine grove on a sand beach. UNESCO describes pilgrims passing through three zones on the way up: grass, forest and the burnt summit. It also observes that some shrines associated with Fujisan have been renewed on a 60-year cycle, in the same way that the Ise Shrine is renewed every 20 years.

^{SENGEN SHRINES AND THE WORSHIP OF MOUNT FUJI}

Large red wooden torii gate leading to a shrine among tall trees — The great torii of Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Jinja, Fujiyoshida, 2019. Image: 江戸村のとくぞう, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Yamanashi guide describes worship of Fuji in stages. During the eruptive period, from the end of the Nara period (710 to 784) through the Heian period (794 to 1185), people venerated the mountain's deities from a distance. As activity subsided, practitioners of Shugendo, the mountain ascetic tradition, led worship ascents. UNESCO notes that shrines, huts and Buddhist facilities were built along the routes from the 18th century onward, as organised pilgrimage grew, and that pilgrims set out from Sengen-jinja shrines at the foot of the mountain. The Japan National Tourism Organization notes that during the Edo period (1603 to 1867), followers of the Fuji-ko faith made the pilgrimage from Edo to the summit.

The principal Sengen shrine is Fujisan Hongu Sengen Taisha in the city of Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, which Nippon.com describes as the head shrine of more than 1,300 subsidiary shrines across Japan. Its kami are Asama no Okami and Konohana no Sakuya Hime. The current shrine was built in 806 to house the kami of Yamamiya Sengen Jinja, and the Engishiki, compiled in 927, lists it as a myojin, or eminent shrine. Tokugawa Ieyasu paid for more than 30 structures on the grounds; his main hall, worship hall and gateway still stand. He also declared all land above the eighth station of the mountain to belong to the shrine, which keeps a detached shrine, the Okumiya, at the summit, where a priest stays each July and August.

On the northern side, Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen-jinja stands in Suwanomori, a red pine forest planted in the Edo period. The Japan National Tourism Organization describes the shrine as the historic entrance to Mt. Fuji for climbers, with two large cedars, Taro and Jiro, described as a thousand years old. On the night of 26 August each year, bonfires three metres high are lit along the road to the base of the mountain for the Chinka Taisai, or Yoshida Fire Festival, which the tourism board puts at 400 years old. The tourism board notes that the Yoshida Trail starts at Umagaeshi, where stone monkeys guard the gate.

^{FUJI-KO: THE PILGRIM ASSOCIATIONS OF EDO}

The Yamanashi guide traces Fuji-ko to Hasegawa Kakugyo (1541 to 1646), who taught that Fujisan is the god of origin and laid the foundations of the movement. Writing for Nippon.com, James Singleton calls him a semi-legendary figure known as the father of Fuji-ko. Two later teachers in his line, Murakami Kosei (1682 to 1759) and Jikigyo Miroku (1671 to 1733), were active in the mid-Edo period, and according to the Yamanashi guide the number of followers rose sharply after Miroku's time. The guide quotes a late Edo saying that the city had 808 towns and 808 Fuji-ko groups; Singleton reports that by some accounts there were more than 800 at the movement's height.

Each group pooled money every month and held a lottery to choose the members who would make the climb on its behalf. Pilgrims wore white attire for religious training and carried out ablutions at sacred waters before ascending. The Funatsu lava tree moulds, known as Otainai, were treated as a womb through which pilgrims passed. Some pilgrims also made the Uchihakkai-meguri, a circuit of eight lakes: the Fuji Five Lakes of Yamanakako, Kawaguchiko, Saiko, Shojiko and Motosuko, plus Asumiko, Shibireko and Sudoko, with the eight springs of Oshino Hakkai later added. In Yoshida, 86 oshi lodging houses served pilgrims throughout the Edo period, and two of them, the former house of the Togawa family and the house of the Osano family, are part of the World Heritage property.

For members who could not travel to the mountain, Fuji-ko groups built fujizuka, small replicas of Fuji for climbing in the city. A sect headed by Takada Toshiro is credited with building the first in 1780; the Takada Fuji still stands within Mizuinari Shrine near Waseda University. Singleton counts more than 60 fujizuka of various ages in and around Tokyo, most of which can still be climbed, though the Fuji-ko themselves are no longer active. The gates of the Shitaya-Sakamoto mound, which has its own eighth station marker, open for several days each year to mark yamabiraki, the official start of the climbing season on the real mountain in late June and early July.

^{MOUNT FUJI IN POETRY AND WOODBLOCK PRINTS}

In literature, Fuji appears in the Man'yoshu, Japan's oldest anthology of waka poems, compiled from the late 7th century into the latter half of the 8th. Shizuoka Prefecture notes that it includes a poem by Yamabe no Akahito, who died in 736, praising the view of Mount Fuji from the Tago coast in the middle of Suruga Bay, with snow lying white on the peak. The British Museum describes Akahito as one of the two "saints of poetry", together with Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, and as esteemed in particular for his nature poetry. A version of the Fuji poem was later included in the Hyakunin isshu, the anthology of one hundred poems by one hundred poets compiled by Fujiwara no Teika in the 1230s.

UNESCO's synthesis records large numbers of images of the mountain from the 14th century, and that in the early 19th century the ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Katsushika Hokusai (1760 to 1849), whose series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji includes a view from the same Tago coast, and of Utagawa Hiroshige spread images of Fujisan far beyond the mountain. The British Museum holds a print from the late 1830s in which Hokusai illustrated Akahito's poem for the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse. UNESCO credits the early 19th-century prints with making the form of Fujisan widely known as the symbol of "Oriental" Japan, and with having a profound impact on Western art in the 19th century, part of the wider movement described in Japonism.

^{WHEN CAN YOU CLIMB MOUNT FUJI?}

Mountain huts and climbers on a bare volcanic slope above the clouds — Climbers and mountain huts on the Yoshida Route, Mount Fuji. Image: Alpsdake, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The climbing season runs from early July to early September. For 2025, the climbing site fujisan-climb.jp set the Yoshida Trail on the Yamanashi side open from 1 July to 10 September, with its descending trail open until noon on 11 September. The three Shizuoka trails, Subashiri, Gotemba and Fujinomiya, opened from 10 July to 10 September, as did the Ohachi-meguri circuit around the summit crater. The site notes that dates can change with weather and trail conditions, and that trails may close even during the season when bad weather brings a risk of landslides or rockfall.

The Japan National Tourism Organization describes Kawaguchiko Station as a transport hub, with buses to the Mt. Fuji 5th Station, which is reached by the Fuji Subaru Line. The Yamanashi guide gives the fifth station's name as Tenchinosakai, meaning the boundary between heaven and earth, and identifies Oikiai, where the Yoshida and Subashiri routes converge, as the original eighth station. Nippon.com reports that a record 285,000 people climbed the mountain in 2017. All five of the Fuji Five Lakes are listed among the component parts of the World Heritage property, as are the eight ponds of the Oshino Hakkai springs that pilgrims added to their circuit of the lakes.

^{MOUNT FUJI AT THE AUBREY, MANDARIN ORIENTAL HONG KONG}

The Aubrey at Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong — The Aubrey, Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong

The Aubrey is a Japanese izakaya and bar on the top floor of Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, a project completed in 2021. Its concept is the manor of an eccentric English gentleman, a home shaped by a collector's obsession with Japan, and the venue is named after the illustrator Aubrey Beardsley. The interiors combine dark timber panelling, gilded frames and gallery walls, with a curio lounge fitted with bespoke display cabinetry. The decorative scheme draws on Japonisme and ukiyo-e motifs.

Mount Fuji is one of those motifs, alongside a pagoda, a torii and crashing waves. As a motif, the mountain carries the record set out above: praised in an 8th-century poem by Yamabe no Akahito, worshipped through Sengen shrines and Edo-period Fuji-ko pilgrimage, depicted in large numbers of images from the 14th century, and carried to Western audiences by early 19th-century ukiyo-e prints that UNESCO credits with a profound impact on Western art, before UNESCO inscribed it in 2013 as a sacred place and source of artistic inspiration.