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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Yamanashi
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Fuji pilgrims once carried memaki: fish wrapped in triangular arame seaweed and simmered for 10+ hours. Its shape is said to echo Fuji, and local families still make it for Kawaguchi Asama Shrine’s April festival.
In Hokusai’s 1830–32 print of Lake Kawaguchi, the real Fuji is a bare summer mountain—but its reflection wears winter snow and sits off-center. It’s an artistic twist, not a faithful mirror image.
Unoshima is the only island among the Fuji Five Lakes. Jōmon- to Yayoi-period pottery has been excavated there, making this tiny sacred island an archaeological site as well as a landmark on the lake.
Wakasagi were not native to the Fuji Five Lakes. In 1919, fisheries researcher Ikusaku Amemiya trial-released eggs from Lake Kasumigaura into Kawaguchi; local records count 300,000 eggs.
In the late 1600s, Shinakura residents began digging a 3.8-km tunnel to carry Lake Kawaguchi water through the lava hills. Work stopped and restarted; it finally flowed in 1865, nearly 200 years later.
Kawaguchi was one of the Fuji-faith “Inner Eight Lakes,” visited for water purification. A 16th-century text attributed to Fuji religious founder Hasegawa Kakugyō names it among the lakes where he performed water austerities.
Lake Kawaguchi has no natural river outlet, so floodwater can linger. After damaging floods in 1982–83, Yamanashi completed a 3-km floodway in 1994, quadrupling the lake’s discharge capacity.
Locals call Unoshima “Benten-sama”; its shrine, founded in 1554, became a place to pray for protection from water disasters and for rain. The annual island festival falls on April 25.
The familiar name “Fuji Five Lakes” spread nationally after 1927, when the five lakes were entered together in a “Japan’s 25 Scenic Spots” selection. Their recognition helped popularize them as a group.
