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Minami Alps NP, Nagano / Shizuoka
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At 3,013 m, Mount Hijiri is Japan’s southernmost peak above 3,000 m—the last high summit on the country’s long chain of 3,000-metre mountains.
Near Iwatō Takimidai on the trail between Sawarajima and Hijiridaira, pillow lava preserves an underwater eruption: lava cooled into cushionlike forms before plate movement carried this former seafloor into the mountains.
At the Hijiri–Usagi saddle, a huge red-chert cliff began as tiny radiolarians’ silica shells settling on a deep-ocean floor about 100 million years ago; plate movement later added this seafloor rock to Japan’s edge.
Hijiri has two summits: the 3,013 m high point is Maehijiri, while lower eastern Oku-Hijiri (2,978.7 m) holds the triangulation station—so the survey marker is not on the mountain’s highest point.
The kanji 聖 means “sacred,” but one theory traces Hijiri to “hiji-oru” (an elbow-like bend) or “hezuri,” a cliffside traverse. Local sources offer other explanations, so the name’s origin remains unsettled.
Snowbeds west of Oku-Hijiri shelter wet-loving Chinguruma and Aono-tsugazakura. With deer damage widespread across the South Alps, Hijiri’s summit area is one of the rare places where browsing has remained slight.
Nagano volunteers repair deer fences and vegetation-recovery nets on Mount Hijiri. At one protected patch, it took 7 years after fencing for Nikkō-kisuge lilies to grow large enough to flower again.
On the Nagano-side approach to Hijiri, the footpath from Benigashima toward Nishizawa follows an old Tōyama Forest Railway alignment, once used to haul timber out of these remote South Alps forests.
