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Fuji-Hakone-Izu NP, Yamanashi
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At 25, Fujikō pilgrim Takayama Tatsu became the first documented Japanese woman to summit Fuji, in 1832. Local history links her ascent to Yoshida Trail, 40 years before the ban on women climbing was lifted.
Stone monkeys bow beside the torii at Umagaeshi. They are symbolic guardians, not trail-wildlife portraits: local legend says Fuji first appeared from the mist in a Kōshin, or monkey, year.
In 1733, Fuji-kō leader Jikigyō Miroku died at Yoshida Trail’s Eboshi Rock after 31 days of fasting. He had designated Yoshida as his followers’ main ascent route, helping make it a pilgrimage highway.
Many climbers start at the Fuji-Subaru Line 5th Station, but that modern approach meets the older Yoshida-guchi pilgrimage road at 6th Station. When the road opened in 1964, most climbers began farther up the mountain.
At the trailhead, as many as 86 oshi households hosted Fuji pilgrims. A packed lunch could be ume rice balls with simmered shiitake and kanpyō; dinner might include carp raised in the hosts’ ponds.
When women were barred from climbing above the 2nd station, some reportedly left the trail for Woman’s Heaven, an outlook about 1 km from the shrine, to pray toward Fuji’s summit and the sunrise.
Umagaeshi means “horse-turn-back.” At about 1,450 m, the old open grassland gave way to steep forest; beyond this point even supplies had to be carried by people.
At the Ōgiai stop, mountain huts combined into the Fuji Hotel in the early 1900s, bringing two-tier bunk beds and curry rice. A post office, police post, first-aid station and telephone also served climbers there.
In the foothill town, the August 26–27 Yoshida Fire Festival marks the end of summer pilgrimages. Giant torches blaze in the oshi district, and bonfires are lit at mountain huts above the 5th Station.
The 3rd station was once called Chūjikidō, or “midday-meal hall”: pilgrims who set out from Yoshida early often reached it around lunchtime. It was also known as Sangen Chaya, recalling its teahouses.
At one Edo-period checkpoint on the route, pilgrims paid 14 mon; 8 mon of that covered a Kongō climbing staff. The detail survives in the archaeological record of the 2nd station.
When Oishi Tea House opened in 1914, clearing nearby brush revealed a striking stand of Japanese azaleas. The flowers became a local attraction and earned national Natural Monument status in 1928.
A marker on the lower trail commemorates a winter ordeal: in January 1918, Fuji-kō practitioners set out from Fujiyoshida and spent about a month on a snow-mountain ascetic journey.
Nakano Chaya, roughly midway between the shrine and Umagaeshi, dates to 1706. This historic rest stop still welcomes hikers with Yoshida udon and sweets, keeping a local food tradition close to the old pilgrimage road.
