Legends of Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is not just Japan's highest mountain. In the old stories it is a goddess, a gate to immortality and the reason the volcano smokes. No other peak on earth carries quite so much legend so gracefully.

The princess of the blossoms

The deity of Fuji is Konohanasakuya-hime, the blossom princess, whose name evokes flowers opening on the trees. She is the goddess of Mount Fuji and of cherry blossom, and her shrines ring the mountain; the great Sengen shrines at its foot have marked the start of the pilgrimage for over a thousand years. Her story is pure fire: accused of infidelity by her husband, she proved her innocence by giving birth inside a burning hut, unharmed. A goddess who walks out of fire is the right guardian for a volcano, and climbers still pass through shrine gates on their way to the crater.

The elixir on the summit

The older Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, often called Japan's first story, ends on Fuji. A bamboo cutter finds a tiny shining princess, Kaguya-hime, inside a bamboo stalk; she grows into a beauty, refuses every suitor including the emperor, and finally returns to her true home, the moon. She leaves the heartbroken emperor a letter and an elixir of immortality. He orders both carried to the top of the highest mountain in the land and burned, because immortality means nothing without her. One old reading says the mountain's name echoes fushi, deathlessness, and that the smoke once seen rising from the crater was the elixir, still burning.

A mountain you climb politely

Fuji last erupted in 1707 and is still a sacred mountain, recognised by UNESCO as a place of faith and art. The polite phrase is that it is a mountain everyone should climb once and no one should climb twice: the ascent is a long, stark trudge on volcanic gravel, done overnight to reach the summit for goraiko, the sunrise, which is the entire point. Watching the sky catch fire from the crater rim, with a shrine at your back, the legends stop feeling decorative.

Meeting the mountain

• Mount Fuji - the climb, the five lakes and the classic views of the perfect cone.
• Fushimi Inari - ten thousand vermilion gates on another sacred mountainside, in Kyoto.
• Cherry blossom season - the blossom princess's other gift, and Japan's loveliest fortnight.

Climbing practicalities

The summit is 3,776 metres and genuinely cold even in August: the hiking kit and the high-altitude checklist cover it between them. A head torch is non-negotiable for the overnight ascent, and sunrise photographers will thank themselves for warm layers and the night-shoot kit. Climb only in the official summer season; the goddess is less forgiving off it.

An emperor burned immortality on this summit because a princess left for the moon. Your reasons for climbing can be simpler.