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Minami Alps NP, Yamanashi
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Below the Obelisk, a 2010 local report counted more than 100 Jizō statues, some weighing about 20 kg. In a local custom, couples carried one down while praying for a child, then returned 2 after a birth.
A 2022 drone-based 3-D study found the Obelisk’s granite columns undulate and have irregular cross-sections. From below, that geometry makes the tower look like a stack of blocks rather than one smooth spike.
Hōō-shajin, the massif’s namesake bellflower, grows on the granite cliffs and scree around Hōō Sanzan. Its narrow leaves and purple blossoms dangle from the rock; botanist Mitsumaru Tsujimoto discovered it here in 1906.
In 1933, Nesta McRae climbed the Obelisk with a British party; a Japanese Alpine Club history credits her with the first female ascent. She made her mark on the tower’s early climbing history.
Local names for the granite spire include Jizō-butsu and Dainichi-iwa. The rock was revered as a Buddhist sacred object long before climbers made it famous by its later name, “Obelisk.”
Walter Weston made the first known ascent of the rock tower in 1904. A regional academic history credits him with calling it an “obelisk,” a word for a tall, tapered monument; local names included Jizō-butsu and O-tongari.
By 2018, Nirasaki’s Hakuho-kai mountaineering club had carried about 20 Jizō statues up the mountain since the 1980s, helping keep the child-granting tradition alive.
From Mukawa, the pinnacle and ridge resemble a bird spreading its wings, inspiring the old name Ōtorigatake, “Great Bird Peak.” A Nirasaki shrine priest used the name in a mountain-travel diary in 1824.
For centuries, “Hōōzan” did not point to just one settled group of peaks: accounts used it for Jizogatake alone, for 2 peaks, or for all 3. The familiar “Hōō Sanzan” is one answer to that old naming puzzle.
