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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Yamanashi
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Motosu’s reflected Fuji appeared on Japan’s 1984 ¥5,000 and 2004 ¥1,000 notes. Photographer Koyo Okada took the picture in 1935; the ¥1,000 note redesigned in 2024 now shows Hokusai’s Great Wave.
Motosu-area deer curry grew from a very local problem: deer were eating shiitake crops. In 2007, local tourism businesses and a Tokyo cooking school developed a recipe using deer culled over crop damage.
Jars and stone tools lie underwater off Motosu’s southeast shore, mostly from the 4th–5th centuries, with older Jōmon pieces too. Many are nearly whole; archaeologists still don’t know exactly how they ended up submerged.
A 4-m core from Motosu’s lakebed preserves roughly 8,000 years of history. Its ash layers revealed evidence of 2 previously unknown Fuji eruptions—and showed that ash from 3 known eruptions spread farther west than researchers had realized.
Local legend says a dragon lived in Motosu until Fuji’s lava poured into the lake and drove it up nearby Ryūga-take—“Dragon Mountain.” Another version says the dragon climbed there to warn villagers of the eruption.
Motosu was one stop on Fuji-ko’s “Uchi-hakkai” pilgrimage, a circuit of 8 lakes where devotees performed water purification. A 1733 religious text lists the lakes on this route, including Motosu.
Poet Yosano Akiko visited Motosu with her husband Tekkan in 1923. Her verse describes the quiet hills around the lake and Fuji’s wind blowing over nearby Eboshigatake; it is carved on the eastern shore.
The photographer behind Motosu’s famous Fuji image reportedly called the mountain “Fujiko,” as if greeting a woman. Local accounts say Koyo Okada made around 400,000 photographs of Fuji over his lifetime.
Motosu’s mud holds clues to ancient Asian dust storms: quartz in its sediments comes from airborne dust, since the surrounding Fuji basalt has no quartz. The record shows dust reaching Japan dropped sharply between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago.
An angler’s mystery catch in November 2022 turned out to be a North American lake trout measuring 81.3 cm and weighing 5.6 kg. Later investigations linked trout predation to declining Himemasu catches; Yamanashi is studying how to manage the fish.
Motosu, Shoji, and Sai may share underground water pathways: their water levels move in connection. Their shorelines look separate, but the water beneath them links this trio of Fuji lakes.
The Motosu settlement beside the lake once prospered as both a checkpoint and a post town on the Naka-do route. Before the Fuji reflection became famous, this shoreline was part of a historic mountain travel corridor.
