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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Kanagawa
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Each October 24, a fire is kindled at Hakone Mototsumiya on Komagatake and carried to Hakone Shrine. The next day, it travels on to shrines throughout Hakone—a mountain-top ceremony that links the whole area.
Hakone Mototsumiya stands on Komagatake as a place to worship nearby Mount Kamiyama, revered as Hakone Shrine’s sacred mountain. So the shrine on this summit is, in a sense, a viewing place for another holy peak.
Beside the summit shrine, Bako-seki means “horse-descent stone”: local legend says a deity arrived here riding a white horse. Nearby Bajan-seki is associated with tethering the horse—folklore rooted in this volcanic landscape.
Hakone kometsutsuji grows on exposed, wind-beaten rock near Komagatake’s summit, on part of its western slope. The species is rare, with its distribution limited to the Fuji volcanic belt and the Chichibu area.
A protected forest on Komagatake shelters himeshara trees near the northern limit of their range. The Forestry Agency notes that such trees are unusually rare when growing together in a substantial stand, so this community is protected.
The open summit is called a kayato—a mountain clearing where grasses grow. From this grassy top, visitors can see widely in every direction, while the surrounding outer-rim mountains remain forested.
Komagatake may look smoothly green, but several old lava-flow layers can still be picked out around the summit. They show how repeated volcanic activity built up this part of Hakone’s central cone.
Hakone Shrine’s own tradition traces worship on Komagatake to about 2,400 years ago. The present Hakone Mototsumiya building is far more recent: it was rebuilt in 1964 as the shrine’s mountain-top sanctuary.
Before the Komagatake Ropeway opened in 1963, a funicular railway began carrying visitors up the mountain in 1957. The summit’s modern lift access therefore started with a different kind of rail ride.
