Mt Fuji

[Lady Anastasia]

"Lo! There towers the lofty peak of Fuji
From between Kai and wave-washed Suruga,
The clouds of heaven dare not cross it,
Nor the birds of the air soar above it.
The snows quench the burning fires,
The fires consume the falling snow.
It baffles the tongue, it cannot be named
It is a spirit mysterious."

* from A Waka Anthology, Vol One: The Gem Glistening Cup

[Lady Anastasia]

Fuji as deity
The earliest recorded reactions to Fuji, from the Man'ypshu (Ten Thousand Leaves) collection of about 720, are of awe. The volcano was still very active at this time:

Rising between the lands of Kai
and Suruga,
where the waves draw near,
is Fuji's lofty peak.
It thwarts the very clouds
from their path.
Even the birds
cannot reach its summit
on their wings.
There, the snow drowns the flame
and the flame melts the snow.
I cannot speak of it,
I cannot name it,
This occultly dwelling god!

This sense of religious awe forms the basis for practically all attitudes to Fuji until the modern period, with the mountain seen as the home of a plethora of Shinto and Buddhist deities and the goal for legendary pious climbs by major religious figures—notably, En no Gyoja (7th century), founder of the Shugendo mountain-venerating (and mountain-climbing) sect of Buddhism, and Kukai (774–835), founder in Japan of the Shingon esoteric sect of Buddhism. Even earlier, Prince Shotoku (574–622) was thought to have flown magically to the summit on his horse.

The legendary founding of the Fuji Hongu Sengen Shrine is said to have occurred in the reign of Emperor Suinin (traditionally said to have reigned 29 BC to AD 70). By the later Fleian Period (794–1185) the deity most closely associated with Fuji was Asama Daimyojin, also known as Asama Gongen and Sengen Daibosatsu (Asama and Sengen are alternate readings of the same Chinese characters). Well before the enforced institutional division of Shinto and Buddhism that occurred at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868–1912), Fuji was also identified with the Shinto female deity Konohanasakuya-hime—she is depicted on the first page of Hokusai's One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji (1834, cat. 41) holding a sacred mirror and branch of sakaki. This identification of Konohanasakuya-hime with Fuji took place 'at the unrecorded level of folk belief in the late medieval period, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries' and was well established by the Edo Period (1600–1868). That Fuji should be seen as a female deity is somewhat ironic, given that mortal females—regarded as ritually impure by the Shinto religion—were not allowed to climb right to the top until 1872.

A key image that helps us to understand something of these complex strands of religious belief and practice in the late medieval period is the 'Fuji Pilgrimage Mandala' (Important Cultural Property, Fuji-san Hongu Sengen Taisha, fig. 1), that bears the seal of the painter Kano Motonobu (1477–1559) and is thought to be a product of his workshop. Starting from the bottom we have the pine-clad spit of land, the famous beauty spot Miho no Matsubara in Suruga Bay, and Seiken Temple next to an official checkpoint on the Tokaido Highway. Crossing the Fuji River we arrive at the Sengen Shrine, where pilgrims purify themselves in a pool and a waterfall. White-robed, they ascend the zigzag path to the summit, which has the stylized triple-peak seen in all old paintings of Fuji. The deities manifested at the peak are three Buddhas, from right to left: Dainichi, Amida and Yakushi, and either side of the mountain are the sun and moon, drawing the cosmos around it. According to the prevailing syncretic beliefs (honji suijaku) of the medieval period, Shinto kami were protective incarnations of Buddhist deities. The Buddha most closely associated with Fuji was Dainichi, the cosmic Buddha Vairocana, who was seen as the honji (original source) for his Shinto avatar Sengen Daibosatsu. The summit of Fuji was also a possible entrance to the paradise of Amida Buddha, and its fiery innards an entrance to the Buddhist hells, through the dreaded 'man hole' (hito-ana). Mountain mandalas were normally quite crudely painted and used in a popular setting to illustrate sermons, but the example from Moronobu's workshop is in an unusually finely developed style. The white-robed pilgrims depicted ascending the slopes would be of the Shugendo mountain-venerating sect of Buddhism founded by En no Gyoja, whose worship of Fuji was centred around Murayama on the south side of the mountain, near the Sengen Shrine and which by this period had expanded to include lay believers as well as the yamabushi (mountain ascetics) of earlier times.

Quite in parallel with its religious significance, Mt Fuji frequently appeared in secular classical poetry in a number of metaphorical guises. Just some of the most well-known examples are given here. In the 10th-century collection Tales of Ise (cats. 1 and 2), the journey of the protagonist into exile—he is traditionally identified as the courtier-poet-lover Ariwara no Narihira (825–80)—takes him beyond Fuji to the wild eastern provinces. Because Fuji was generally snow-clad almost all year round, it was 'oblivious to time' (toki shiranu) and Narihira admonishes the mountain for not knowing that it is mid-summer:

Fuji is a mountain
That knows no seasons.
What time does it take this for,
That it should be dappled
With fallen snow?

Toki shiranu
Yama wa fuji no ne
Itsu tote ka
Ka-no-ko madara ni
Yuki no fururan

(Trans. Helen Craig McCullough)

Tales of Ise became emblematic of court culture for later generations, was known widely in popular printed editions in the 17th century and subsequently parodied inventively in Ukiyoe paintings and prints (cats. 35–7).

The 9th and 10th centuries were a time of repeated volcanic eruption and Fuji's smoking cone became the metaphor for fiery passion. Thus this poem in the Kokin wakashu (Collection of Poems, Ancient and Modern, early 10th century):

If this vain passion
Must smoulder like Fuji's fires,
Then let it smoulder.
However futile the smoke,
It defies the gods themselves.

Fuji no ne no
Naranu omoi ni
Moeba moe
Kami dani ketanu
Munashi keburi o.

(Trans. Helen Craig McCullough)

More resigned in its acceptance of the mutability of this world is a well-known verse by the itinerant monk-poet Saigyo (1118–90), who in 1140 had abandoned his family and privileged life at court to journey around the country:

Trailing on the wind,
The smoke of Mount Fuji
Fades in the sky,
Moving like my thoughts—
Toward some unknown end.

Kaze ni nabiku
Fuji no keburi no
Sora ni kiete
Yukue mo shiranu
Waga omoi kana.

Fuji is co-opted to express a Buddhist message of detachment from worldly concerns, one which is mediated by the heightened poetic sensibility of an individual, creative imagination. Monk Saigyo was often portrayed looking at Fuji in later paintings and prints (cats. 31 and 32).