Japan's Sacred Mountain Culture

Think of Japan and one of the first things you might picture in your mind is Mount Fuji.  It's iconic, the perfect conical shape, the purple-gray slopes, the snow covered cap.  You see it in everything from pamphlets to ancient scrolls and wood block prints such as Hosukai's The Great Wave of Kanagawa, majestic and serene.  Of course, the reality of such a thing is the very nature of Japan's turbulent geological existence, and beneath that perfect picture is a volcano - perhaps one of the most famous on Earth.

The last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji was in 1707, about 104 years after Tokugawa Ieyasu became shogun and united Japan. It must have come as a shock to the denizens of the growing metropolis to see smoke rising from Fuji, but then again there are other volcanos that erupt and erupted with more frequency in Japan even back then. The Japanese attributed such eruptions to the will of their Shinto gods, and Japanese mountains have been synonymous with gods and mythology since time immortal. 

Mount Fuji is home to Konohanasakura-hime, a spirit of life and she has a shrine at the base and the summit of the mountain.  Every day and every year people climb Fuji to see the sunrise because the mountain has become synonymous with Japanese culture and what it means to be Japanese.  People equate the mountain with her and visa versa, and this is not uncommon. Inari-san in Kyoto is the domain of Inari, god/goddess general prosperity, rice, and other things - and Inari's mountain is covered in the mysticism and magic of his/her domain which I covered in a previous blog post.  Step off the track there, and you might encounter a shapeshifting fox.

But the mountains are not only the domain of shinto spirits, Buddhists share these sacred realms and with their faith come new spirits and new domains of belief.  Come to a Buddhist peak and you will find the Tengu, Japan's wild mountain bird-men who I covered in a recent blog post.   Mountains have always been considered removed from the wordly ways, from the troubles and tribulations.  They reach towards the heavens, they are quiet and mostly untouched by man.  Even now in modern Japan, much of the nation is covered by mountains but the populated areas are below such peaks.

Part of this may be attributed to the sacred nature of such mountains, the fact each was not only a domain of a god/goddess or multiple spirits, but it might be a god itself.  In ancient times as well as our times, people from Japan and all over the world come to these mountains to get away, to get in touch with something beyond their lives.  We seek to rise above, to touch the heavens as we do the Earth through the mountains. 

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia commons.  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/Mount_Fuji_Japan_with_Snow%2C_Lakes_and_Surrounding_Mountains.jpg/1024px-Mount_Fuji_Japan_with_Snow%2C_Lakes_and_Surrounding_Mountains.jpg  )