When you step out of the wilderness, visit the Yamagata Prefectural Nature Museum, which provides an overview of the area’s unspoiled nature while contributing to its preservation.
If you’d like to test your stamina, the views over the surrounding peaks are worth the slog. The Mount Gassan Visitor Center provides historical context as well as information on the topography and ecology of the area.įurther south, Mount Asahi offers some hiking terrain with a reputation for being some of the most challenging in Japan. While at Mount Gassan, take time to visit Midagahara, a series of marshes blooming with alpine flowers. The trek, which takes around two and a half days, reportedly has a profound spiritual effect on many hikers.
This pagoda, built without nails and retaining its natural wood color, is designated a national treasure. Each mountain has a shrine near its peak, including a five-storied pagoda among cedar forests on Mount Haguro. Start at Mount Haguro-which represents birth-then trek to Mount Gassan, symbolizing death, and finally on to Mount Yudono, representing rebirth. These peaks have been a center of worship for Japanese mountain ascetics, known as yamabushi or shugenja, for 1,400 years.Įxperience the popular pilgrimage of rebirth by embarking on a multiday hike to all three peaks. Climbing Mount Fuji is only permitted during the summer months from mid-July to mid-September the routes and mountain huts are closed out of season.Dewa Sanzan refers to three sacred mountains in the center of Yamagata Prefecture. Fuji is also the subject of many poems in literature.įour hiking routes lead from different starting points to the summit of Mount Fuji: Yoshida Route, Subashiri Route, Gotemba Route and Fujinomiya Route. At the same time, it is a popular subject in Japanese art and can be found, among other things, in the famous woodblock prints by the artist Hokusai. Due to the strikingly symmetrical volcanic cone, Fuji is widely regarded as the most beautiful mountain in the world and is often viewed as a symbol of Japan. The mountain also plays an important role in Buddhism, because in the so-called Shugendo, climbing a mountain is viewed as an expression of faith. In Shinto, Mount Fuji has been sacred for centuries and around it are more than 1,300 so-called Sengen shrines. At the northern foot of the mountain are the five Fuji lakes. Its last known eruption was in 1707 and lasted about two weeks.
It is a stratovolcano on the Pacific Ring of Fire, which is classified as active, but with a low risk of eruption.
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