Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji, the snow-capped volcano between Suruga and Kai, is Japan's highest peak and one of its Three Holy Mountains. In Shintō belief it is the dwelling of Konohanasakuya-hime, wife of Ninigi, and Sengen shrines were built at its foot to pacify its eruptions.

In early times the mountain was worshipped from afar; when eruptions quietened in the Heian period, Shugendō ascetics made it a centre of mountain religion, and the monk Matsudai Shōnin founded a temple on the summit in the early twelfth century. The Hōei eruption of 1707 to 1708 buried nearby villages in ash.

The Edo period saw the rise of Fuji-kō, the pilgrim movement founded by the ascetic Hasegawa Kakugyō, whose followers climbed the cone seeking rebirth and purification. In the 1830s Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji carried its image across the country and beyond.