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Rishiri Rebun Sarobetsu NP, Hokkaido
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The familiar garden “Rishiri poppy” can be an impostor. Cultivated poppies were once sown on the mountain to restore its rare wild flower, but genetic tests showed they were different; residents, researchers and officials worked together to remove them.
A fisherman found a stand of about 400 Chishima cherry trees on Mount Rishiri’s south slope in 1933—but no one believed him until he brought others back in 1967. The unusual grove is now a Hokkaido-designated Natural Monument.
In August 1896, Hokkaido officials kept a summit observation station on Mount Rishiri, recording weather 12 times a day. Its report also preserves a sketch of the total solar eclipse seen there on August 9.
In Ainu tradition recorded by local historians, prominent Mount Rishiri was the male mountain, paired with Menoko-yama—the “woman mountain”—on Sakhalin across the Soya Strait. Both were revered, and explorer Mamiya Rinzo also recorded the belief.
In 1923, Mount Rishiri—“Rishiri Fuji”—won a newspaper poll to choose Hokkaido’s Three Scenic Views, receiving 562,749 votes out of about 3.92 million. A commemorative stone was erected the following year.
Mount Rishiri’s upper flower meadows are the only place in Japan to find wild Botankinbai. This local specialty grows in clumps near the ninth station, its bright yellow blooms built from more than a dozen overlapping petals.
In 1890, ascetic Amano Isojiro and local residents reportedly spent 3 months cutting a route up Mount Rishiri, then placed a Fudo Myoo statue on the north summit. The statue and dedication tablets are preserved at Daihoji Temple.
The island’s name comes from the Ainu words *ri-shir*, meaning “high island”—a fitting description when Mount Rishiri rises 1,721 meters above the sea and forms the island’s skyline.
The cone above the sea is only part of Mount Rishiri: the Japan Meteorological Agency says its volcanic deposits reach 80 meters below today’s sea level. The volcano began forming about 200,000 years ago.
Mount Rishiri is only 1,721 meters tall, yet the Environment Ministry compares vegetation near its refuge to conditions around 2,500 meters in central Honshu. The island’s northern latitude and isolated rise from the sea help explain the difference.
Mount Rishiri acts as a natural filter for rain and melting snow. At the Oshidomari trail’s third station, Kanro-sensui—one of Japan’s original 100 Selected Waters and the northernmost—emerges as a spring.
A beetle found among Mount Rishiri’s alpine plants and rocks is endemic to the island. Local museum researchers suggest cold-loving beetles may have been stranded in high mountain habitats as the climate warmed after the Ice Age.
