Mount Fuji

• 1. Introduction

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  Mount Fuji rises 3,776.24 meters above the island of Honshu, and on a clear day people in Tokyo, about 100 kilometers to its northeast, can see it. It is the tallest mountain in Japan. It is also the seventh-highest island peak on Earth, and the second-highest volcano on any Asian island, behind Mount Kerinci on Sumatra. Its cone is so symmetrical that it has become the country's most recognizable silhouette, and snow covers it for about five months of every year. Yet nobody can say for certain what its name means. Older volcanoes lie buried inside it. For centuries it was closed to women, and today officials charge visitors a fee to climb it. What is Fuji made of, who has claimed it, and why does it still worry the people living beneath it?

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• 2. A Name Without Answers

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  The two characters used to write Fuji today, 富 and 士, mean roughly "wealth" or "abundant" and "man of status." But the mountain was called Fuji before those characters were ever attached to it. Japanese writers often chose characters for their sound alone, so the meanings may have nothing to do with the name.

  Miyako no Yoshika, writing in the Heian period in a work called Fuji-san Ki, claimed the mountain took its name from the county. A 9th-century text, the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, offers a different route and links the name partly to the image of climbing the slopes. Folk etymologies are more poetic. One reads the name as 不二, "not two," meaning without equal. Another reads it as 不盡, "not to exhaust," meaning never-ending.

  Hirata Atsutane, a classical scholar of the Edo period, guessed that the name described a mountain standing up shapely like part of a rice plant. John Batchelor, a British missionary who lived from 1855 to 1944, argued that Fuji came from the Ainu word fuchi, meaning fire, the name of the fire deity Kamui Fuchi. The linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi rejected this because the sounds do not develop that way. Modern academics call Fuji and Fuchi false friends. Studies of place names containing fuji suggest the word comes from the Yamato language instead. The toponymist Kanji Kagami traced it to a "long well-shaped slope."

  English speakers say Mount Fuji, or sometimes the redundant "Mt. Fujiyama." Japanese speakers say Fuji-san, and that san is not the polite suffix used with people. It is a Sino-Japanese reading of the character for mountain.

  The scholar Alexander Vovin proposed one more theory, built on an Old Japanese pronunciation. He suggested the word may come from an eastern form meaning "fire master." Whether or not he is right, the fire is real, and its record is written in layers deep inside the mountain.

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• 3. Four Volcanoes in One

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  Fuji sits where the Eurasian Plate, the North American Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate meet in a triple junction. These plates underlie the western part of Japan, the eastern part, and the Izu Peninsula. The Pacific Plate slides beneath them, and that subduction drives the volcanic activity. A second triple junction, the Boso, lies only 400 kilometers away.

  Scientists have identified four distinct phases in the mountain's construction. The oldest, called Sen-komitake, is an andesite core hidden deep within the mountain, and it was discovered in 2004. Above it came a basalt layer known as Komitake Fuji, believed to have formed several hundred thousand years ago. About 100,000 years ago, Old Fuji grew over that layer. The modern mountain, New Fuji, began forming around 10,000 years ago.

  Nearby volcanoes complicate the story. Ashitaka Volcano, 20 kilometers southeast, was active from 400,000 to 100,000 years ago. Pre-Komitake began erupting in the Middle Pleistocene, in an area 7 kilometers north of today's peak. Old Fuji is now almost completely buried. About 18,000 years ago, a large landslide tore away part of the southwest flank. Roughly 2,500 to 2,800 years ago, a sector collapse destroyed the top of the ancient cone, leaving only New Fuji's summit.

  The main crater measures 780 meters across and 240 meters deep, with a floor 100 to 130 meters wide. Near the rim, slopes run between 31 and 35 degrees, the natural angle of dry gravel. Farther out they ease to about 27 degrees because of scoria, and in the foothills they fall below 10 degrees.

  The mountain is also pocked with side vents. Omuro-Yama is the largest of more than 100 cones lined up along two crossing axes through the summit. More than 70 lava tunnels run beneath the surface, along with many molds of lava-buried trees. The last of the flank cones formed in 1707.

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• 4. Records of Fire

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  In 781, a chronicle called the Shoku Nihongi noted that ash fell from Fuji, but gave no more detail. It is the first of ten eruptions that can be traced to reliable records. An account from the early 800s describes skies dark even in the daytime, and a later one says gravel fell like hail.

  The eruption of 864 to 866 changed the map. According to the Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku, lava flows split a single lake into three, creating Lake Motosu, Lake Shōji and Lake Saiko. They are part of the five lakes around the mountain, along with Lake Kawaguchi and Lake Yamanaka.

  Many records are thin. In 999, news of an eruption reached Kyoto, with no other detail. In 1033, the news took two months to arrive. A Buddhist monk wrote the only contemporary account of the eruption of 1083, and later writings suggest its sound may have carried to Kyoto. Monks at Kubo Hachiman Shrine recorded a visible flame in 1435 or 1436. Because they mention no smoke, it was probably a lava-only eruption. Monks at Myōhō-ji reported a fire in 1511, and since no vegetation grew at the location they describe, it was almost certainly a lava flow.

  The last was the Hōei eruption, which began on the 16th of December 1707 and ended around the 1st of January 1708. It opened a new crater and a second peak, named Mount Hōei, halfway down the southeastern side. Cinders and ash fell like rain across Izu, Kai, Sagami and Musashi.

  Since then Fuji has been quiet, and it is classified as active with a low risk of eruption. Still, a shallow magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck a few kilometers from its southern side on the evening of the 15th of March 2011. After the Tōhoku earthquake, media speculated about unrest. In September 2012, models from the National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention suggested that pressure in the magma chamber could be 1.6 megapascals higher than before 1707. Some outlets read that as a sign of imminent eruption. But magma pressure cannot be measured directly, so the calculation stayed speculative. Fumaroles and newly found faults are common at this kind of volcano.

  In 2021, a new hazard map raised the estimates of lava flow and added vents, and a magnitude 4.8 earthquake followed soon after. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the quake did not raise the eruption risk. In 2023, officials produced a new evacuation plan to match the updated map.

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• 5. Sacred Slopes

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  Tatsu Takayama is the first woman on record to reach the summit, in the fall of 1832. That was notable because the summit had been considered sacred since ancient times, and women were forbidden to climb it. The ban ended in law on the 4th of May 1872, when the Grand Council of State issued Edict 98. It ordered that any remaining female exclusion on shrine and temple lands be "immediately abolished."

  In ancient times, people worshipped Fuji from a distance. The Asama shrine was built at the foothills to ward off eruptions. When volcanic activity subsided during the Heian period, which ran from 794 to 1185, the mountain became a base for Shugendō, a religion combining mountain worship with Buddhism. Worshippers began to climb. By the early 12th century, Matsudai Shonin had founded a temple on the summit.

  According to the Nihon Shoki, the goddess of the mountain is Konohanasakuya-hime, wife of Ninigi. The Shinto shrine Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha is dedicated to her.

  Hasegawa Kakugyō, an ascetic who lived from 1541 to 1646, founded the cult Fuji-kō during the Edo period. Its members venerated the mountain as a female deity and were urged to climb it. By doing so they would be reborn, "purified and... able to find happiness." The cult declined in the Meiji period. It survives today, absorbed into Shintō sects.

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• 6. Seen and Climbed

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  After 1600, when Edo, now Tokyo, became the capital, travelers on the Tōkaidō road saw Fuji constantly, and the mountain became a favorite subject for artists. The historian H. Byron Earhart wrote that medieval Japanese came to see it as the "number one" mountain of "the three countries of India, China, and Japan." Hokusai made its image famous abroad with Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, both from the 1830s. It has also appeared in poetry, music, theater, film, manga, anime, pottery and even Kawaii subculture. It inspired the Infiniti logo and gave its name to the Mount Fuji sign in medicine.

  A Japanese saying holds that a wise person climbs Fuji once, and only a fool climbs it twice.

  Sir Rutherford Alcock made the first ascent by a foreigner in September 1860. He went up in 8 hours and down in 3. His short account in The Capital of the Tycoon was the first widely read Western description of the mountain. Lady Fanny Parkes, wife of the British ambassador Sir Harry Parkes, became the first non-Japanese woman to summit, in 1867. The photographer Felix Beato climbed two years later. In the early 20th century, the educator Frederick Starr drew audiences across America with Chautauqua lectures about his ascents.

  On the 30th of April 1936, Washington State's Mount Rainier National Park and Japan's Fuji-Hakone National Park began the first international sister-mountain relationship. Japanese American immigrants around Seattle fondly called Rainier "Tacoma-Fuji." Mount St. Helens was once known as "The Fuji of America" before its explosive 1980 eruption. New Zealand's Mount Taranaki resembles Fuji so closely that films and television use it as a stand-in.

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• 7. Weather and Wind

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  The highest recorded temperature at the summit was 17.8 C, in August 1942. The summit has a tundra climate, with a Köppen classification of ET. Snow usually first caps the peak around the 2nd of October. In 2024 it arrived on the 6th of November, the latest since records began in 1894.

  For 72 years a staffed weather station stood at the summit, the highest in Japan. Observers there watched radar sweeps for typhoons and heavy rain. It closed in September 2004 and was replaced by an automated system.

  On the 5th of March 1966, BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707, broke up in the air and crashed shortly after departure. It went down near the Gotemba New Fifth Station. All 113 passengers and 11 crew members died. Investigators attributed the crash to clear-air turbulence from lee waves on the downwind side of the mountain. A memorial for the victims stands near that fifth station, the same point where most climbers begin their ascent.

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• 8. The Climb Today

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  About 300,000 people climbed Fuji in 2009, mostly in July and August, when huts are open and the weather is warmest. Buses to the trailheads typically begin running on the 1st of July. Climbing from October to May is discouraged after several high-profile deaths in cold weather.

  Most Japanese climbers hike through the night to reach the summit at sunrise. The morning light is called goraikō, meaning "arrival of light."

  Four main routes lead to the top: Yoshida, Subashiri, Gotemba and Fujinomiya. Each has numbered stations, and the summit is the tenth. Climbers usually start at the fifth stations, which can be reached by car or bus. The Yoshida route is the most popular, thanks to its large parking area and many big huts. Fujinomiya has the highest fifth station. The ascent from a fifth station takes five to seven hours and the descent three to four. Many people come down by the ash-covered Subashiri and Gotemba paths, where running from the seventh station to near the fifth takes roughly 30 minutes.

  Tractor routes beside the trails carry supplies to the huts. They are closed to climbers where they do not merge with the main paths, but some people ride mountain bikes down them anyway, which can send rocks onto others. Four older routes start from the base: Shojiko, Yoshida, Suyama and Murayama. Murayama is the oldest. Bears have been sighted along the Yoshida one. Camping above the fifth station is illegal because Fuji is a national park.

  On the 1st of February 2024, Yamanashi prefecture announced a mandatory fee of 2,000 yen, about 13 dollars, for hikers on the Yoshida trail. It also set a daily limit of 4,000 hikers and closed the trail from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m., except for guests in mountain lodges. Shizuoka prefecture closed the Subashiri, Gotemba and Fujinomiya trails at the same hours. Both acted over congestion.

  On the 22nd of June 2013, Fuji joined the World Heritage List as a cultural site. UNESCO described it as having "inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries." Its listing covers 25 sites of cultural interest, including the shrine Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha.

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