Type Casting

At least four different people over the last four weeks have asked me to climb Mount Fuji with them before the end of the summer.

To them I quote a wise Japanese teacher I once knew: "Mount Fuji is for contemplating, not for climbing."

Sure, some people would call me lazy. To those people, I say: yes. Yes, I am.

Chances are, if we don't begin with samurai, ninjas, geisha or otaku, if I were to ask you to paint me a picture of Japan, you are most likely going to start with Mount Fuji (富士山). It is unquestionable that Fuji-san continues to have a marquee presence in Japanese iconographic culture, since time immemorial.

For centuries, the volcano was so sacred that for long points of its history no man was allowed to even set foot on the face of the mountain, with no first "official" climbing, as the stories say, being recorded until 663 CE by an unnamed monk.

But it was not until the capital was moved in 1603 under the Tokugawa Shogunate from Kyoto (京都) to Edo (江戸), with most people traveling the 53-stations along the Tokaido (東海道) Road, that the Mountain became a central feature of Japanese artistic identity. Traveling the road circumventing the base of Mount Fuji as they passed by the Izu Peninsula (伊豆半島), the mountain stood in stark contrast to the geographical and cultural flatness of Eastern Japan (関東). While Kyoto (京都) and Nara (奈良) had hundreds of temples and centuries of history to look to behind them, the citizens of Tokyo, instead, only had to look up to understand their place as the root of the ladder to the heavens.

Since the Meiji Era (明治時代), climbing Mout Fuji has been an exercise in discipline in the long tradition of Japanese ascetic practices

¹There's a Japanese saying that goes 「一度も登らぬ馬鹿、二度登る馬鹿」, "It is only a fool who does not think to climb Mount Fuji once in his life; but only a fool climbs it twice."

¹. The summit, which was once a sacred seating place for Kono-hana-sakuya Hime (木之花開耶姫), the goddess of earthly life, is considered a power-spot, upon which prayers can be more clearly heard and directly answered.

And while tourists numbering in the hundreds-of-thousands continue to climb the mountain annually, climbing Mount Fuji had not always been such an egalitarian affair.

For centuries, the holy mountain's 3,776 meter (12,388 feet, or ¥Ft.) ascent remained an unattainable pilgrimage to many due to such unfortunate afflictions as illness, injury, old age, cost, living in Kansai or just being born a woman

²It goes without saying that throughout most of history, as is echoed throughout most of Western history as well, women were not allowed to enter into sacred places of enlightenment in Japan--For as "the Lotus Sutra states: 'The body of a woman is filthy and not a vessel of the Law.' A woman could not attain enlightenment unless she was reborn as a man"--which would also include climbing to Mount Fuji's summit. This rule stood in place until an 1872 Meiji edict abolished such restrictions nationally at all shrines and temples.

².

Anyway, for those not bold enough to challenge the rules outright or those not physically or fiscally able, as a nearly mandatory spiritual pilgrimage, ingenuity abounded.

One of the more ingenious work-arounds was the creation and proliferation of 富士塚 (Fuji-dzuka): local-sponsored miniature representations of the Sacred Mountain.


From One-Hundred Views of Edo, by Hiroshige
Usually services of the Fuji-ko pilgrims (富士講), devotees constructed replica Mount Fujis out of stones or plants brought back from their sojourn to remember their experiences by and share their enlightenment with those from their town who were not as fortunate to go

³As a sort of advanced-level omiyage (お土産).

³.

Often never taller than 12 meters, these mounds consist of simple faux-mountain trails complete with block-lava stones, hand carved "lava-caves" and shrines, and are adorned with plants similar to, if not exactly, the ones found sparsely dotting the side of the rocky volcano's face. Often, Fujizuka feature summits with picturesque views from which the holy mountain can be viewed and contemplated. Or at least used to, before all those pesky apartment buildings got in the way.

Interestingly enough, most Fujizuka even host local festivals and ceremonies that echo the tradition of Mount Fuji itself, like the one at Shinagawa Shrine (品川神社), which celebrates an Opening Festival on July 1st, "Just like the one at the real Mount Fuji." Or so they say.

Un-cite-able sources claim there to be more than 50 Fujizuka remaining throughout Tokyo alone, with hundreds strewn across Japan as far south as Osaka (大阪) and Kobe (神戸).

And while I have not yet made any plans to visit any of the purported "hundreds" of Fujizuka, I am 100% certain that, after a quick Google-search, I have actually been to more than a dozen on accident.

Heck, there's even one 30 minutes away from where I live, in Nagareyama...