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Chichibu-Tama-Kai NP, Tokyo
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Ishione’s name is a two-peak family affair: Mt. Mutsuishi (“Six Stones”) and Mt. Nanatsuishi (“Seven Stones”) both sit on the ridge, and local guide material says their names together inspired “Ishione.”
The name Takanosu-yama has a falconry backstory: a Chichibu-Tama-Kai National Park ranger says the shogunate and others once captured young hawks in this area, linking that practice to the mountain’s name.
A 1944 Okutama guide already described Ishione as a “fire-line ridge” with open kaya grassland. That practical firebreak still creates a sunny strip where summer-to-autumn flowers such as maruba-dakebuki and wheel lilies bloom.
The lower Ishione trail passes Kinugasa, a hamlet whose residents moved downhill in 1965–1974. A local forestry walk recorded its “sugi-kune”: carefully trained cedar hedges used as windbreaks and fire barriers.
Ishione is a forest-climate escalator: from Okutama Station, the roughly 20-kilometre ridge climbs through warm foothill woods and cool beech–oak forest to fir and hemlock near Kumotori, Tokyo’s only subalpine zone.
One stretch of Ishione is called Masakado-bamba—“Masakado’s horse ground.” Local lore links the name to the warrior Taira no Masakado; it’s a memorable Okutama legend, rather than proof of a documented visit.
