Mount Fuji
Mount Fuji is the highest mountain in Japan and probably the most famous symmetrical volcano in the world. Its near-perfect cone shape, snow-capped peak and the way it stands alone on the Japanese landscape have made it a sacred symbol for over a thousand years. Fuji has not erupted since 1707, but it is still classified as an active volcano.
- Height3,776 mTallest mountain in Japan
- CountryJapanOn Honshu, the main island
- TypeStratovolcanoActive but currently dormant
- Last erupted1707Three centuries quiet, but still active
- Climbers/yearapprox. 300,000Most in just 2 summer months
- Sacred toShinto and BuddhismA holy mountain for centuries
Mount Fuji compared to other peaks
Mount Fuji is the tallest peak in Japan. Its perfectly symmetrical shape (it looks like a child's drawing of a mountain) is what makes it so famous, not its height.
What is Mount Fuji?
Mount Fuji is a stratovolcano, a tall cone-shaped volcano built up from many layers of lava and ash from past eruptions. It sits on Honshu, the largest of Japan's islands, approx. 100 km southwest of Tokyo. On a clear day you can see Fuji from many parts of Tokyo, although air pollution and weather mean such clear views are rarer than they used to be.
Why so symmetrical?
Fuji's near-perfect cone is the result of a particular kind of volcanic eruption. Stratovolcanoes form when sticky, gas-rich magma erupts from a single central vent and falls back evenly around the vent. Over hundreds of thousands of years, the layers build up into a regular cone. Many of the world's most picture-perfect mountains (Mount Fuji, Mount Mayon in the Philippines, Mount Hood in Oregon) are stratovolcanoes.
Fuji is in fact built on top of two older volcanoes, both buried beneath the current cone. The visible mountain is around 100,000 years old, although volcanic activity in the area began over 700,000 years ago.
The 1707 eruption
Mount Fuji's most recent eruption began on 16 December 1707 and continued on and off until 1 January 1708. It was triggered by a huge magnitude-8.6 earthquake near the coast 49 days earlier. The eruption did not produce much lava, but threw out vast amounts of ash and rock. Ash fell as far as Tokyo (then called Edo), where people were left to shovel it from their roofs and streets. The eruption created a new crater on the southeast flank of the mountain, called Hoei Crater, which is still visible today.
Mount Fuji has been silent for over three centuries since then, but scientists consider it still active. If it erupted today, the ash could cripple Tokyo for weeks, disrupt aviation across East Asia, and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.
Climbing Mount Fuji
Around 300,000 people climb Mount Fuji every summer, almost all of them during the official climbing season from early July to early September. There are four main routes, and most climbers do the trip from a mountain hut at the 5th station (around 2,300 m) overnight to reach the summit in time for sunrise. The trail is not technical but is steep and exposed. The thin air means many climbers suffer altitude sickness.
A Japanese saying about Fuji goes: "A wise man climbs Mount Fuji once; only a fool climbs it twice." The crowds and the cold mean the experience is often more endurance test than mountain adventure.
Deeper dive: subduction volcanoes, the Hoei eruption and Fuji as world heritage
Mount Fuji exists because Japan sits at the meeting point of three tectonic plates: the Pacific, Philippine and Eurasian plates. The heavier oceanic plates are being pushed under (subducted beneath) the lighter Eurasian plate that carries the Japanese islands. As the descending plates reach depths of around 100 km, they melt and produce magma that rises through the crust and erupts as volcanoes. Almost all of Japan's volcanoes (over 100 of them) formed this way, in a long curve called the Japanese island arc. Fuji is just one of the most recent and most famous.
The 1707 Hoei eruption is one of the best-studied historical eruptions in Japan because it happened during the Edo period when literate observers were able to record the events in detail. The eruption ejected around 0.7 cubic km of material in just 16 days, mostly as ash and pumice. The volcanic plume reached around 23 km high. Ash blanketed central Japan, killing crops and triggering famine. Tens of thousands of refugees fled the affected regions. The eruption was the largest of Mount Fuji in the historical period, but the geological record shows that even larger eruptions have happened in prehistoric times.
Mount Fuji was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013, recognised not for its natural features (it was rejected for natural-site status because of widespread tourism damage) but as a "cultural site" for its profound influence on Japanese religion, art and literature over more than 1,000 years. The designation covers 25 component parts including the mountain itself, several Shinto shrines at its base, five sacred lakes in the foothills, and the surrounding pine forests. The cultural designation also requires Japan to do more to manage the impact of mass tourism, including limits on climber numbers and improvements to waste management on the mountain.
The country is Japan. The other famous European mountain in this set is the Mont Blanc.