Dewa Sanzan

The Dewa Sanzan are the three sacred mountains of Dewa Province in the far north of Honshu, Mount Haguro, Mount Gassan and Mount Yudono, each with its own shrine. The chief shrine on Haguro venerates the deities of all three.

Tradition dates their opening as a religious centre to 593, when Prince Hachiko, son of the murdered Emperor Sushun, fled the Soga clan to Dewa and spent his life in devotion to the mountain god Haguro Gongen.

The mountains became a training ground of Shugendō mountain asceticism. In summer yamabushi and ordinary pilgrims trekked north to their shrines. Mount Haguro, the only one approachable all year, has a five-storey wooden pagoda in its cedar groves, and the poet Matsuo Bashō later joined the pilgrims climbing its stone path.