Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan, rising to 3,776 m (12,388 ft) and known for its graceful conical form. It lies in Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures of central Honshu, about 100 km west of Tokyo. The mountain is a composite stratovolcano of the Izu Volcanic Arc.

Mount Fuji stands in the Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures of central Honshu, with the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program recording its coordinates at 35.361 degrees north and 138.728 degrees east. Its southern slopes reach down to Suruga Bay, and the mountain's base has a circumference of about 78 miles (125 km). At the top, the summit crater measures about 1,600 feet (500 m) wide and 820 feet (250 m) deep.

The Fuji Five Lakes lie arrayed around the northern side of the mountain — Kawaguchiko, Saiko, Yamanakako, Shojiko and Motosuko — and serve as prime destinations for water sports, cycling and hiking. The Oshino-Hakkai springs are fed by Mount Fuji snow water filtered through underground lava over about twenty years. Diamond Fuji, the spectacle of the sun shining on the summit at sunset, can be observed from Lake Yamanaka for about four and a half months from autumn to winter.

At the summit conditions are alpine, with average temperatures from about minus 19 degrees Celsius in winter to roughly 6.8 degrees Celsius in summer. It may be steamy and hot when a climb begins, but the summit of Fuji can be rainy, windy and below freezing even in summer, and the incline and loose volcanic rock make injuries more likely on the descent.

Mount Fuji is a composite stratovolcano whose steep, conical profile results from numerous layers of lava and debris from explosive eruptions, including ash, cinders and volcanic bombs, that build up over time. It is considered active and has erupted more than 15 times since 781 CE.

The most recent major eruption took place in December 1707 and its ash darkened the midday sky as far as Edo, now Tokyo, and buried temples and dwellings near the mountain. The Plinian Hoei eruption of AD 1707 was the most recent eruption at Fuji, occurring on the southeastern flank 49 days after a magnitude 8 to 9 earthquake along the Nankai trough.

Climbers must undertake the ascent knowing that Mount Fuji is an active volcano and that there is a possibility of eruption.

Climbing Mount Fuji was once viewed as a religious pilgrimage to honour the spirit of one of the most beautiful and iconic peaks on the planet. The Yoshida-Guchi climbing trail officially starts at Kita-Guchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine, and the traditional trail from the base to the 5th station is open and free to climb year-round.

The prefectural government decided to control climbers by setting up a gate at the entrance of the trail, making part of the trail and the descent road a prefectural facility. These measures include providing information and education on environmental care and safe climbing, maintaining public and mountain lodge toilets and regulating private cars at the starting points of mountain trails.

Within the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park are three Japanese Geoparks: Hakone, Izu Peninsula and Izu Oshima Island.

Mount Fuji's place in Japanese art reaches back to the eleventh century, and by the nineteenth century the mountain had become an internationally recognized emblem of Japan through the medium of woodblock printing. That circulation of images carried Japanese aesthetics into Western art and shaped its later development.

The high point of the Japanese landscape print is generally identified with Katsushika Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, issued between 1826 and 1833, the set of views by which the mountain is best known. Hokusai was born in Edo in October 1760 and died in the same city on 10 May 1849, at the age of eighty-eight.

Within that series stands the Great Wave, a woodblock print in ink and colour on paper dated to about 1830 to 1832 and measuring 25.7 by 37.9 centimetres. In the composition the mountain is reduced to a small triangular mound set inside the hollow of the cresting wave. The print is said to have inspired Debussy's La Mer and Rilke's Der Berg.

On the upper 1,500-metre tier of the 3,776-metre mountain, pilgrim routes and crater shrines were inscribed together with sites around the base, including Sengen-jinja shrines, Oshi lodging houses, lava tree moulds, lakes, springs and waterfalls revered as sacred.

The Ministry of the Environment, the Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures, related municipalities and mountain lodges work together on environmental measures for the Mount Fuji area of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. The mountain's cultural standing was formally acknowledged when the property was inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2013 under criteria (iii) and (vi), with a property area of 20,702.1 hectares and a buffer zone of 49,627.7 hectares.

Four main trails lead up the mountain — Yoshida, Subashiri, Gotemba and Fujinomiya — and all of them begin at the fifth station. The official climbing season runs from 1 July to 10 September on the Yoshida trail, when the mountain huts are open and all services are available at the Subaru Line 5th Station. Climbing during the off-season, from 11 September to 30 June, above the 5th station is strictly prohibited.

The climb from the fifth station to the summit covers roughly 6 km with 1,500 m of elevation gain, and most climbers take about 5 to 7 hours to ascend and about 3 to 4 hours to descend.

A hiking fee of 4,000 yen per person per climb applies on the Yoshida Trail, and it is also charged to climbers using the descending trail from another gate. Mountain huts typically cost around 15,000 to 20,000 yen per person in the 2026 season. A daily cap of 4,000 climbers from the fifth station applies, with the Fuji-Subaru Line fifth station gate closed once the limit is reached, and the gate is closed daily from 2 PM to 3 AM, with only climbers holding a mountain hut reservation and having paid the entrance fee permitted after closure. Since 2014 Yamanashi Prefecture has asked climbers above the fifth station for a cooperation fee of 1,000 yen, and it decided to add a toll fee of 2,000 yen for the trail. Climbers are asked not to attempt overnight climbs without staying in mountain huts, avoiding so-called bullet climbs.

About 300,000 mountaineers visit during the summer, with up to 10,000 people climbing each day. Fujiyoshida City describes Mount Fuji as the most ascended peak in the world, climbed by people of all ages and abilities from around the world. Visitors to the fifth station reached 5.06 million in 2019, more than double the figure recorded in 2013 when Fuji was registered as a World Heritage site.

Fuji is an active basaltic volcano near the Tokyo metropolitan area, and future eruptions could have serious nationwide impacts. An eruption similar in scale to the Hoei event would cause great impacts today, especially through volcanic ashfall across the nation and the nearby Tokyo metropolitan area about 100 km to the east of the volcano. Scientists have compiled the 17 most prominent steepest-descent paths for lava flows on Fuji, and each path has its own evacuation route.

• 2000–2001
  Deep low-frequency earthquake swarm
  A deep low-frequency earthquake swarm occurred under Fuji.^{2Fujisan (Volcano Number 283030) · Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program ↗}
• 11 March 2011
  Tohoku megathrust and aftershock
  The 2000–2001 swarm was followed by the Tohoku megathrust, and an aftershock of magnitude 5.9 was centred below the volcano.^{2Fujisan (Volcano Number 283030) · Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program ↗}
• 1780–1820
  Steam observed at the summit
  No further eruptions have occurred at Mount Fuji since 1707, while steam was observed at the summit between 1780 and 1820; the volcano is still considered active.^{7Mount Fuji, Japan · NASA Earth Observatory ↗}