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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Shizuoka
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In 1860, British envoy Rutherford Alcock became the first foreigner recorded to climb Fuji, using the old Ōmiya–Murayama pilgrimage route. At the summit he took measurements, raised a British flag and toasted with champagne.
Every 12 years, in the Monkey year, the Iwabuchi Torii-ko offers a white-wood torii at the summit shrine. The local tradition is said to honor timber once used for ferry boats and to pray for safe crossings.
Alcock’s climb sparked a local supernatural rumor: a printed broadsheet claimed a tengu, a mountain goblin, had become angry at the foreign visitor and stopped his ascent. In fact, Alcock reached the summit.
A variation called the Prince Route branches from the Fujinomiya Trail, crossing Hoei Crater before joining the Gotemba route. It was named after Crown Prince Naruhito used it on his first successful Fuji climb in 2008.
The Fujinomiya Trail reaches the summit beside Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha’s inner shrine. Land above the 8th station was nationalized in the Meiji era, then returned to the shrine in 2004 after a 1974 Supreme Court ruling.
The Hoei crater beside the route formed during Fuji’s 1707 eruption. The eruption opened 3 aligned craters, and ash from the mountain reached Edo—today’s Tokyo—on the very day it began.
The older pilgrimage to Fuji began far below today’s 5th Station: pilgrims purified themselves in Wakutama Pond by Fujisan Hongū Sengen Taisha, then headed through Murayama, a center of mountain asceticism, toward the summit.
The route has both a New Seventh Station at 2,780m and an Original Seventh at 3,010m. The upper station’s hut describes it as the long-established seventh, so both names appear on the same climb.
Between the 5th and 7th stations, look for little white iwatsumekusa flowers among the rocks. Their deeply notched petals can look like 10, but each flower actually has just 5.
A new Ōmiya trail opened in 1906, going straight to today’s 6th Station instead of passing through Murayama. By 1908, a climbing guide recorded 15 rest stops along it, each with a commemorative stamp.
From the 2,400m 5th Station, the summit is only about 4.3km away—the shortest approach on Fuji. But climbers use the same rocky track going up and down, squeezing past one another on narrow sections.
At the Fujinomiya-side summit, a post office opens seasonally beside the inner shrine. After climbing Fuji, visitors can send a postcard home from the mountain’s very top.
