Mount Fuji (富士山) is Japan's highest mountain and its best-loved symbol. It is an almost perfect volcanic cone with a snowy top for much of the year. It rises alone above the plains southwest of Tokyo. For centuries, people have worshipped it as sacred and painted and written about it without end. On a clear day, people in Tokyo still look for its sudden pale outline on the horizon.
A sacred mountain
Fuji is an active volcano, and it last erupted in 1707. Its perfect shape and its solitude made it holy long before it became a climb for tourists. It is a reihō (霊峰), a "sacred peak," home to kami, the gods of Shinto. For centuries, people worshipped the mountain itself. Pilgrims climbed it as a religious act, and shrines stand at its foot and on its summit. Fuji also fills Japanese art. The most famous example is Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes The Great Wave. All this explains UNESCO's choice in 2013. It listed Fuji as a cultural site, not a natural one, because the mountain shaped a whole nation's imagination.
Climbing Fuji
About two hundred thousand people climb Fuji every summer. The official season is short, roughly from July to early September. Only then are the trails and mountain huts open and the snow gone. Climbers now also pay an entry fee. The classic climb takes all night. You climb partway in the afternoon and rest or sleep in a hut. Then you set out again in the dark to reach the top for goraikō (御来光), the sunrise from the summit. The sun breaks over a sea of clouds below you. A Japanese saying sums up the local wisdom. Only a fool never climbs Fuji, and only a fool climbs it twice. The reward is the view of a lifetime, not the hard slog itself.
Words & idioms to take away
Idioms & proverbs to carry away
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富士山: the reading is Fuji-san. Here 山 means "mountain" and reads san. It is not the polite -san that Japanese adds to people's names. So "Mount Fujisan" says "mountain" twice.
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御来光 (goraikō): the sunrise seen from a mountain top, especially from Fuji. It is a sight worth climbing all night for.