Mount Haku

Mount Haku is a 2,702-metre volcano on the border of Kaga and the neighbouring provinces, its snow lingering long after lower peaks have thawed; with Mount Fuji and Mount Tate it is counted among Japan's Three Holy Mountains. Its summit was first reached in 717 by the Shugendō monk Taichō, who built a chapel there.

Shirayama Hime at its foot was reckoned the ichinomiya of Kaga and heads some two thousand Hakusan shrines; it first appears in court records in 853 and prospered through the Kamakura and Muromachi periods.

The Kaga ikki rising of 1455 cost it its estates and fire destroyed the buildings in 1480, leaving the cult in ruins for more than a century until Maeda Toshiie, lord of Kaga, restored it under Tokugawa rule. The volcano's last recorded eruption was in 1659.