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Yakushima NP, Kagoshima
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To mark 20 years since Miyanoura’s pilgrimage was revived, 6 local representatives walked from the shore to this 1,936m summit and back: about 50km over 37 hours, with one night on the mountain.
One of the small stone shrines tucked into a cleft beneath the summit’s granite capstone is traditionally dated to 1586. Local mountain worship is literally built into the rock, not displayed in a grand hall.
Yakushima’s subtropical coast is far away in climate: near this summit, average winter temperatures can drop below −5°C, and peak snow may reach 3–6m. The island’s highest point can feel like a different Japan.
Before Miyanoura’s spring and autumn mountain pilgrimages, villagers collect surf-wet sand and carry it in tiny bamboo tubes to the summit shrine—a beach offering brought from the sea to the mountain gods.
Traditionally, returning pilgrims are welcomed in Miyanoura with sake, then a gathering called uchimuke: soup is served before a shared feast. The mountain rite ends around a neighborhood table, not at the summit.
The summit rite blends faiths: pilgrims clap in a Shinto style at the shrine, but also chant Buddhist prayers together. Miyanoura’s mountain worship is a living example of the two traditions woven together.
In August and September, bluish-purple Yakushima gentian flowers among the high mountain rocks. This endemic perennial is one of the island’s own plants, so the rocky summit landscape hosts a species found nowhere else.
At the 1,936m summit, a Forest Agency monitoring plot recorded 19 plant species in 2022, up from 15 in 2017. Researchers also found Yakushima bamboo growing denser, reducing light gaps between rocks.
Annual bluegrass plants at the summit are thought to have arrived on hikers’ shoe soles. Forest workers found several growing together away from trampled ground—a tiny example of seeds hitchhiking all the way uphill.
