Mount Fuji (富士山・富士の山, Fujisan, Fuji no Yama) is an active stratovolcano located on the Japanese island of Honshu, with a summit elevation of 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft 3 in). It is the highest mountain in Japan, the second-highest volcano on any Asian island (after Mount Kerinci on the Indonesian island of Sumatra), and the seventh-highest peak of an island on Earth. Mount Fuji last erupted from 1707 to 1708.
It is located about 100 km (62 mi) 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" (三霊山, Sanreizan) 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.
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 (Fuji-san Ki) written by Miyako no Yoshika (都良香) 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" (不死, fushi, fuji) and also from the image of abundant (富, fu) soldiers (士, shi, ji) ascending the mountain slopes. An early folk etymology claims that Fuji came from 不二 (not + two), meaning without equal or nonpareil. Another claims that it came from 不盡 (not + to exhaust), 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 (穗, ho) of a rice plant". British missionary John Batchelor (1855–1944) argued that the name is from the Ainu word for "fire" (fuchi) of the fire deity Kamui Fuchi, which was denied by a Japanese linguist Kyōsuke Kindaichi on the grounds of phonetic development (sound change). 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 (藤, fuji) and rainbow (虹, niji; but with an alternative reading, fuji), and came from its "long well-shaped slope".
Vovin proposed an alternative hypothesis based on Old Japanese reading */puⁿzi/: the word may have been borrowed from Eastern Old Japanese */pu nusi/ 火主, meaning "fire master".
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 yama (山; "mountain") 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 Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山; "the Mountain of Fuji"), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺; "the High Peak of Fuji"), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰; "the Lotus Peak"), and Fugaku (富岳／富嶽), created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
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 (now Tokyo) 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 (May 4, 1872, Grand Council of State Edict 98) 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 April 30, 1936, Mount Rainier National Park of the U.S. and Japan’s Fuji-Hakone National Park started a first-of-its-kind international 'sister mountain' relationship, with Rainier affectionately known as 'Tacoma-Fuji' by Japanese American immigrants of the Seattle area.
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 in the crash, 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, lectures by populist educator Frederick Starr Chautauqua about his ascents of Mount Fuji were widely known in America. A Japanese saying suggests that a wise person will climb Mount 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 3,780 m (12,402 ft), was replaced by an automated system.