Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji is an active stratovolcano located on the Japanese island of Honshu, with a summit elevation of. It is the highest mountain in Japan, the second-highest volcano on any Asian island, and the seventh-highest peak of an island on Earth. Mount Fuji last erupted from 1707 to 1708.
It is located about southwest of Tokyo, from which it is visible on clear days. It has an exceptionally symmetrical cone, which is covered in snow for about five months of the year. It is a Japanese cultural icon and is frequently depicted in art and photography, as well as visited by sightseers, hikers, and mountain climbers.
Mount Fuji is one of Japan's "Three Holy Mountains" along with Mount Tate and Mount Haku. It is a Special Place of Scenic Beauty and one of Japan's Historic Sites. It was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013. According to UNESCO, Mount Fuji has "inspired artists and poets and been the object of pilgrimage for centuries". UNESCO recognizes 25 sites of cultural interest within the Mount Fuji locality. These 25 locations include Mount Fuji and the Shinto shrine, Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha.
Etymology
The current kanji for Mount Fuji, 富 and 士, mean "wealth" or "abundant" and "man of status" respectively. The origins of this spelling and the name Fuji continue to be debated. In Japanese, kanji characters are often applied by sound, and the meaning of the kanji may have nothing to do with the name of the mountain. It was named Fuji before the kanji was applied to it.富士山記 written by Miyako no Yoshika in Heian period states, ”The name of the mountain, Fuji, is taken from the name of the county."
A text of the 9th century, Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, says that the name came from "immortal" and also from the image of abundant soldiers ascending the mountain slopes. An early folk etymology claims that Fuji came from 不二, meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another claims that it came from 不盡, meaning never-ending.
Hirata Atsutane, a Japanese classical scholar in the Edo period, speculated that the name is from a word meaning "a mountain standing up shapely as an ear of a rice plant". British missionary John Batchelor argued that the name is from the Ainu word for "fire" of the fire deity Kamui Fuchi, which was denied by a Japanese linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi on the grounds of phonetic development. Fuji and Fuchi are known to be false friends, and Batchelor's argument is rejected by modern academics. Huchi means "old woman" and ape is the word for "fire", thus ape huchi kamuy is the fire deity. Research on the distribution of place names that fuji suggests that fuji originates in the Yamato language rather than Ainu. Japanese toponymist Kanji Kagami claimed that the name has the same root as wisteria and rainbow, and came from its "long well-shaped slope".
Vovin proposed an alternative hypothesis based on Old Japanese reading : the word may have been borrowed from Eastern Old Japanese 火主, meaning "fire master".
Variations
In English, the mountain is known as Mount Fuji. Some sources refer to it as "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san". This "san" is not the honorific suffix used with people's names, but the on'yomi of the character used in Sino-Japanese vocabulary. In Nihon-shiki and Kunrei-shiki romanization, the name is transliterated Huzi.Other Japanese names that have become obsolete or poetic include,,, and, created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
History
Mount Fuji is widely regarded to have an attractive volcanic cone. It has been a frequent subject of Japanese art, especially after 1600, when Edo became the capital and people saw the mountain while traveling on the Tōkaidō road. According to historian H. Byron Earhart, "in medieval times it eventually came to be seen by Japanese as the "number one" mountain of the known world of the three countries of India, China, and Japan". The mountain is mentioned in Japanese literature throughout the ages and is the subject of many poems.The summit has been thought of as sacred since ancient times, and was therefore forbidden to women. In 1872 the Japanese government issued an edict stating, "Any remaining practices of female exclusion on shrine and temple lands shall be immediately abolished, and mountain climbing for worship, etc., shall be permitted." Tatsu Takayama was the first woman on record to summit Mount Fuji in the fall of 1832.
Ancient samurai used the base of the mountain as a remote training area, near the present-day town of Gotemba. The shōgun Minamoto no Yoritomo held yabusame archery contests in the area in the early Kamakura period.
The first ascent by a foreigner was by Sir Rutherford Alcock in September 1860, who ascended the mountain in 8 hours and descended in 3 hours. Alcock's brief narrative in The Capital of the Tycoon was the first widely disseminated description of the mountain in the West. Lady Fanny Parkes, the wife of British ambassador Sir Harry Parkes, was the first non-Japanese woman to summit, in 1867. Photographer Felix Beato climbed Mount Fuji two years later.
On March 5, 1966, BOAC Flight 911, a Boeing 707, broke up in flight and crashed near the Mount Fuji Gotemba New fifth station, shortly after departure. All 113 passengers and 11 crew members died, which was attributed to clear-air turbulence caused by lee waves downwind of the mountain. A memorial for the crash victims sits near Gotemba New Fifth Station.
Today, Mount Fuji is an international destination for tourism and mountain climbing. In the early 20th century, populist educator Frederick Starr's Chautauqua lectures about his ascents of Mount Fuji were widely known in America. A Japanese saying suggests that a wise person will climb Mt. Fuji once in their lifetime, but only a fool would climb it twice. It remains a popular symbol in Japanese culture, including making numerous movie appearances, inspiring the Infiniti logo, and appearing in medicine with the Mount Fuji sign.
In September 2004, the staffed weather station at the summit was closed after 72 years in operation. Observers monitored radar sweeps that detected typhoons and heavy rains. The station, which was the highest in Japan at, was replaced by an automated system.
Mount Fuji was added to the World Heritage List as a Cultural Site on June 22, 2013.
Geography
Mount Fuji is a distinctive feature of the geography of Japan. It stands tall and is located near the Pacific coast of central Honshu, just southwest of Tokyo. It straddles the boundary of Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. Four small cities surround it - Gotemba to the east, Fujiyoshida to the north, Fujinomiya to the southwest, and Fuji to the south - accompanied by towns and villages. It is surrounded by five lakes: Lake Kawaguchi, Lake Yamanaka, Lake Sai, Lake Motosu and Lake Shōji. They, and nearby Lake Ashi in Kanagawa Prefecture, provide views. The mountain is part of Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park. It can be seen more distantly from Yokohama, Tokyo, and sometimes as far as Chiba, Saitama, Tochigi, Ibaraki and Lake Hamana under skies. It was photographed from space during a space shuttle mission.Climate
The summit has a tundra climate. The temperature is low at high altitude, and the cone is covered by snow for several months of the year. The lowest recorded temperature is recorded in February 1981, and the highest temperature was recorded in August 1942.Fuji's seasonal snowcap appears at an average date of 2 October. In 2024, the snowcap formed on 6 November, the latest-occurring since records began in 1894.
Geology
Mount Fuji is located at a triple junction trench where the Eurasian Plate, North American Plate, and Philippine Sea Plate meet. These three plates form the western part of Japan, the eastern part of Japan, and the Izu Peninsula respectively. The Pacific Plate is subducting beneath these plates, resulting in volcanic activity. Mount Fuji is located near three island arcs: the Southwestern Japan Arc, the Northeastern Japan Arc, and the Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc. The Fuji triple junction is only from the Boso triple junction.Fuji's main crater is in diameter and deep. The bottom of the crater is in diameter. Slope angles from the crater to a distance of are 31°–35°, the angle of repose for dry gravel. Beyond this distance, slope angles are about 27°, which is caused by an increase in scoria. Mid-flank slope angles decrease from 23° to less than 10° in the piedmont.
File:Hasshinpo of Mt.Fuji 40.jpg|thumb|Crater with the Eight Sacred Peaks
Scientists have identified four distinct phases of volcanic activity in the formation of Mount Fuji. The first phase, called Sen-komitake, is composed of an andesite core deep within the mountain, discovered in 2004. Sen-komitake was followed by the "Komitake Fuji", a basalt layer believed to have formed several hundred thousand years ago. Approximately 100,000 years ago, "Old Fuji" was formed over the top of Komitake Fuji. The modern, "New Fuji" is believed to have formed over the top of Old Fuji around 10,000 years ago.
Pre-Komitake started erupting in the Middle Pleistocene in an area north of Mount Fuji. After a relatively short pause, eruptions began again, which formed Komitake Volcano. These eruptions ended 100,000 years ago. Ashitaka Volcano was active from 400,000 to 100,000 years ago and is located southeast of Mount Fuji. Mount Fuji started erupting 100,000 years ago, with Ko-Fuji forming 100,000 to 17,000 years ago, but it is now almost completely buried. A large landslide on the southwest flank occurred about 18,000 years ago. Shin-Fuji eruptions in the form of lava, lapilli, and volcanic ash have occurred between 17,000 and 8,000 years ago, between 7,000 and 3,500 years ago, and between 4,000 and 2,000 years ago. Flank eruptions, mostly in the form of parasitic cinder cones, ceased in 1707. The largest cone, Omuro-Yama, is one of more than 100 cones aligned NW-SE and NE-SW through the summit. Mt. Fuji also has more than 70 lava tunnels and extensive lava tree molds. Two large landslides are at the head of the Yoshida-Osawa and Osawa-Kuzure valleys.
, the volcano was classified as active with a low risk of eruption. The last recorded eruption was the Hōei eruption which started on December 16, 1707, and ended about January 1, 1708. The eruption formed a new crater and a second peak, named Mount Hōei, halfway down its southeastern side. Fuji spewed cinders and ash that resembled rainfall in Izu, Kai, Sagami, and Musashi. Since then, no signs of an eruption are recorded. On the evening of March 15, 2011, however, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake at shallow depth occurred a few kilometres from Mount Fuji on its southern side.